


Consequences

by josephina_x



Series: Dimension 46’\-A [13]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (Ford does NOT feel safe), (again and still), (and Other Things…), (and the results of), (poor Ford...), Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Anxiety, Arguing, Coffee, Dinner, Gen, Genderswap, Haircuts, One Year Later, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, Psychological Distress, See You Next Summer, Sleep Deprivation, Stress, Talking, sleeping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 00:17:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 33,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: Actions have consequences. Some are good. Some are bad. Some are…mixed.And some require penalties.





	1. Recap (Previously, in Dimension 46’\-A…)

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: Consequences  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: Actions have consequences. Some are good. Some are bad. Some are… _mixed_. 
> 
> And some require penalties.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: This, uh, may have gotten a little away from me. Again. *snickers*
> 
> You’ll know what I mean when you get that far down, I think. --Enjoy!! :-D
> 
> (Also, please note that I did add a section to the prior fic (The Idiot Parade) about a quarter of the way down. It gives more of Stan’s thoughts re: Ford, now. You can search for [[ “You’re gonna be,” he told his brother, moving around him, to push at him a bit, steering him towards the kitchen. “Once you get some food in you, _and some more sleep_.” ]] --The next 7 paragraphs after that are new material.)

\---

RECAP WITH CONTEXT(!!): Too Big for the Author’s Note Section!! (so it goes here instead…)

**_ Previously, in Dimension 46’\\-A… _ **

_Sometime in the afternoon of a lazy day of early summer, not quite one year after Weirdmageddon occurred, marks Day 1 of Bill Cipher’s return. This is because a bunch of cultists do just that -- they apparently somehow manage to make Bill Cipher return._

\-- and then [Don't Know Where, Don't Know When…](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12573628) happens --

\-- and then [But [what] I [don’t] Know [will]...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952116) happens --

_And the afternoon of Day 1 ends._

_Several days pass by, with Bill sleeping something like ‘eight hours out of every ten’ for the first couple days (Day 1 through Day 3), and Stan lets him do it. (Stan’s pretty sure Bill might have a concussion, actually.)_

_Mid-morning of Day 2 though, Stan leaves the room for a bit, and Bill ‘escapes’ out through the bedroom window. Bill calls Stan out, trying to ‘take on’ Stan with magic outside of the barrier... and that goes poorly for Bill. (This event is talked about in the ending author’s notes of[Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251), in [Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251), and in [Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627).) End result: Bill basically ends up collapsing from exhaustion at the end of things, and Stan ends up lifting him up over a shoulder, carrying him back inside, and unceremoniously dumping him back into bed._

_In the evening of Day 2, Stan starts trying to put together with Bill what they will eventually refer to in shorthand as a ‘mutual nonaggression agreement’, and Bill seems grudgingly open to going along with it because of what happened that afternoon._

_It takes about a day-and-a-half (until mid-morning of Day 4) for Stan to get the initial structure of said agreement worked out with Bill, to a point where he’s at least reasonably certain that he could safely leave the kid alone in the same room with somebody else (who isn’t him) for more than a minute without somebody ending up dead. (Not that Stan plans on leaving the kid alone in the same room with anybody else right away.)_

_Because of this, Stan decides it’s time to start having Bill out of the bedroom, eating food with everybody else at mealtimes, and brings Bill out to the kitchen for lunch on Day 4; nothing goes_ completely _sideways and wrong in a way that Stan can’t handle, and nobody dies, so Stan’s been making Bill eat meals in the kitchen with everybody else ever since._

_Ford, conversely, didn’t show up for breakfast the morning of Day 4, and has been pulling a “vanishing act” on them at mealtimes ever since. Stan hasn’t really seen Ford since the evening of Day 3, and assumes that it’s a combination of Ford (a) being too busy with tracking down the cultists who brought Bill back to be bothered to show his face around the Shack, and (b) not wanting to be anywhere near Bill Cipher if he doesn’t have to be._

_However, Ford is actually spending almost all of his time downstairs in his basement lab, preoccupied with trying to find a way to kill Bill that doesn’t require use of the Zodiac Circle._

_Throughout this entire time period (the afternoon of Day 1 through Day 5), Stan has been largely staying in the same room with Bill, almost all the time -- and most of the time that Bill’s been awake, they’ve been talking extensively. One of the only times Stan consistently isn’t in the same room as Bill during this time period is when Bill is using the bathroom; he “just” waits in the hallway within sight of the door for Bill, and he lets Bill spend as much time in there as he wants. Day 6 is the first day that Stan stops escorting Bill to the bathroom; instead, Stan generally does something in the kitchen, where he can hear the water running in the bathroom upstairs._

_The afternoon/evening of Day 6 (or 7-ish) rolls around._

\-- and then [Glitches](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928743) happens --

_Several more days pass, following the afternoon/evening of Day 6/7-ish._

_Stan hasn’t really seen Ford at all, but the kids have seen him once or twice in-passing while he’s been sequestered with Bill, so he knows his brother is alive, out, and about, at least. Stan’s not worried; he figures Ford would say something to either him or the kids if he ran into a problem with the cultists. In the meantime, Stan has finished thrashing out the majority of the mutual nonaggression agreement with Bill, at least on the definition of and proper agreement-acceptable responses to physical attacks and such. He’s still working on defining the ‘mental attack’ stuff with Bill, and if he hadn’t thought the kid was nuts_ before _..._

_Mealtimes have been getting less and less tense, and as of Day 8, Stan has started pulling Bill out with him into the living room for short one-to-two-hour stretches of time, outside of just mealtimes, sometimes with the kids around but usually they’re not. And up until Day 11, Stan has always made sure to be in the room at all times and largely within tackling distance of Bill whenever the kids are in there with them, just in case. Stan hasn’t has to drag Bill out of the room to force him to cool off (and let him rant himself from anger down to extreme annoyance out of earshot of the kids) for a little more than a full day now._

_The morning of Day 11, Stan figures it’s a good time to take the next step when Mabel says that she wants to wash Bill’s hair outside, and talks out some boundaries and limits to what he expects is going to end in a flat-out ‘no’ from Bill -- which will be good for all three of the kids, as far as he’s concerned -- but he doesn’t bother trying to outright explain the agreement to either Mabel or Dipper yet, since he’s not finished working out the last details with Bill. He figures he doesn’t have to, since he’s pretty sure that the kids won’t attack Bill if he doesn’t attack them first. Stan’s pretty much completely convinced by this point that there’s no chance that the ex-triangle is going to be the one to break the agreement they’ve got going first, so long as nothing drastic happens to change or upset that, for reasons. He’s planning on going through everything with all the kids straight-out once the agreement’s pretty much all worked out, and doesn’t see any reason to tell them before then; he sees no reason to explain things twice. So he walks Bill to the Shack’s gift shop (and checks to make sure he’s left the outside door open), and stops to let Wendy know what’s what and to keep an eye on things, just in case. And then Stan deliberately goes back inside, back to the kitchen table, and sits down to read the newspaper and wait for either Dipper and Mabel, or Bill (...or all three of them, bickering...) to come back in._

\-- and then [Aggression](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928890) happens --

_It’s a bit later in the morning on Day 11, now._

_After having dragged Ford back to the Shack, and upon hearing an explosion outside the barrier and out in the forest, Stan goes outside after Bill. He’s worried enough that he doesn’t leave Ford’s gun behind; he’s worried that he might need it to shoot whatever must’ve been after Bill. He finds Bill all-in-one-piece -- and the monster in more pieces than he can count -- and brings Bill back to the (relative) safety of the Shack; they don’t run into Ford on the way. Stan is pretty sure that his brother is probably sulking in the basement after having been pulled off of Bill not ten minutes prior, or at least a little cautious after his warning about Bill’s magic, but he takes the long way around in getting back to the Shack just in case. No point in getting into stupid arguments with his brother if he doesn’t have to. Stan leaves Bill out on the porch, and goes inside to “hide” Ford’s gun in one of the kitchen cabinets, and to give Dipper and Mabel a crash course in the agreement, because apparently he_ does _need to go through this with them sooner rather than later._

\-- and while Stan is inside talking to Dipper and Mabel, [Mastermind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952251) happens --

_Noon on Day 11 of Bill Cipher’s return rolls around._

_Bill’s been sitting out on the porch thinking. Stan has finished talking out agreement-stuff with Dipper and Mabel inside the Shack, and Mabel comes outside to talk to Bill..._

\-- and then [Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566594) happens --

_Later in the afternoon on Day 11, after the events of[Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566594), Ford sequesters himself down in the basement lab with Dipper and Mabel, who then try to help their great-uncle put himself back together after what happened out on the porch. Ford wasn’t feeling too safe before, and he’s feeling even less safe now. He’s worried to distraction about the safety of the niblings, and has no idea what’s going on with his brother, but from what the niblings have related to him that afternoon about what Stan has and hasn’t been doing with Bill, it doesn’t sound good. Ford hasn’t been sleeping well since Bill’s been back, and hasn’t been eating properly since Day 4, and..._

_We roll around to late-night on Day 11 of Bill Cipher’s return._

_An entire afternoon and most of an evening has passed since the events of[Fr[i]en[ds and En]emies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566594), and Bill is tired and in pain and aching from everything that happened out on the porch, and then some. Bill isn’t happy about a bunch of things that it feels to Bill like Stan practically threw at him out of nowhere, and Bill’s angry that he hadn’t realized before now the implications of a lot of things Stan’s been talking to him about -- some of which Bill’s already agreed to. They’re both still holding to the basics of the agreement for now, but right now everything feels like it’s in flux, and a lot of arguments are on the horizon. Bill isn’t liking the thought that Stan probably isn’t going to want to make any changes to, or give Bill much leeway on, most of what Stan has already gotten; Bill isn’t all that sure that he’s going to be able to talk Stan around on anything all that easily, and what really doesn’t help is that Bill’s **mind hurts** right now. Bill falls asleep thinking that he’s probably going to try and heal himself the next day, like Stanley suggested, and..._

\-- ...then [Lies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14918627) happens --

\-- and then [Truth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15063542) happens --

\-- and then [Respect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422541) happens --

_It’s still late-night on Day 11, and Stan isn’t too happy to find out that his brother hasn’t been sleeping, probably hasn’t been eating properly, and that things have apparently gotten to the point that they are now at least as bad as they were when Stan first answered Ford’s postcard-call for help, a little more than thirty years ago. Only worse. Because this time, Ford almost shot him, and the kids were in the room with them when it happened. All Stan can get out of Ford is that he doesn’t want Bill talking about “things,” but at least Dipper, and Bill (hell help them all, because heaven sure won’t), are able to explain-things-without-actually-explaining-things via pencil and paper, while they’re all sitting right next to Ford on the floor of the gift shop so he can paranoia-ingly read everything that they’re writing and smack the pencil out of their hands if any of them start writing the wrong thing._

_They all eventually work something out and make enough of the right promises to Ford that Stan manages to convince his brother that it really is safe enough for him to fall asleep, for at least a little while, so long as Ford feels like he’s got enough control of things and enough maybe-trustworthy eyes watching Bill that… something horrible won’t happen that nobody can or will stop? So Stan gets Ford and Bill rearranged out on the floor of the living room, and shoos Dipper and Mabel upstairs to bed, and then settles into his recliner couch-chair with a baseball bat in his hands to watch over them while the two of them sleep, in a borderline-mad detente. It’s not the first time Stan’s stayed up almost all night; he’s done it for worse reasons before, and hey, at least he got maybe an hour or two of sleep before this._

_Day 11 ends._

_Mid-morning of Day 12 finally rolls around, and when Mabel and Dipper are up, Stan sets his bat aside and heads for the kitchen to start making breakfast. He doesn’t see any reason not to. He’s all of five seconds away from walking over there -- two at a run -- and it isn’t like Mabel and Dipper aren’t both armed with guns at this point. Ford should feel safe enough with the two of them on it. They’re good kids._

\-- and then [ The Idiot Parade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15422892) happens --

_Stan shepherds everyone through breakfast… somehow… despite all the craziness and disruption, and manages to convince Ford after he’s eaten something that more sleep is in order. Stan will be staying up and awake and promises to keep an ‘actual eye on Bill’ for Ford, ‘yes, he’ll keep Bill within arm’s reach’ at all times and at least five feet away from the kids, ‘yes, he won’t let Bill run loose’ and leave the house for the interim, ‘yes, he’ll stop Bill’ if it sounds like he’s going to start talking about other dimensions like he’s not supposed to… (which Bill just rolls his eyes at, of course). ‘Get some sleep, Ford.’_

_Ford’s pretty much dead-on-his-feet at this point, since Stan won’t let him have any coffee with breakfast, or any Mabel Juice, either. (Literally hid the stuff.) Ford knows he needs sleep. He either trusts his family, or he doesn’t. ...If he can’t trust his family, he’s doomed anyway, and he knows it, so he goes off to get some sleep in his actual bed... which is helped by Dipper and Mabel coming in after him and promising to stay there with him and guard him while he sleeps. They’re both armed with functional medium-range weaponry. They plan to take shifts paying attention to the door and windows. They tell him they’ll leave the room together for food and bathroom breaks and art supplies -- the twin-buddy system, safety in numbers -- and lock the door behind them when they go, so that Bill can’t get in when they aren’t in there with him. Ford gives them the key to the door so that they can do just that, and lays himself down to sleep..._

\---


	2. Chapter 2

\---

Ford woke to an empty room out of a kaleidoscope of old recycled nightmares.

It was quiet and dark in comparison to the noise that had been inside of his head, and for a long moment he found himself confused by the size of the room he was in and the fact that he was laid out flat on something soft.

And then everything clicked back into place. He was in Dimension 46’\\. He was home.

...He had fallen asleep in his own bed for the first time in nearly two weeks.

Bill Cipher was alive and ostensibly living in the Shack with them because Stan insisted on helping Bill… because Stan insisted Bill was a kid… because Stan insisted that the circle wasn’t…

Ford scrubbed a hand over his face. He realized he wasn’t wearing his glasses; he’d taken them off. ...He blindly reached to his right and grabbed them up from the bedside table where he’d left them.

He needed to get up and deal with this, even if he still felt lousy. He already had a stress headache going upon waking, which he didn’t remember having when he’d laid himself down to sleep. ...Or maybe it was just due to the fact that he was almost certainly severely caffeine-deprived at this point.

_’Either way, I need coffee before I try to deal with any of this…’_

But he _did_ have to deal with it. Ford sat up abruptly, shoving the bedsheets off and away from him. He turned on the light sitting on the bedside table.

He looked around the room, and something seemed… _off_.

He dropped his feet over the side of his bed, got himself upright, walked over to the window, and looked outside. He noted the last fading light in the sky, something that was the leading edge to a twilight gloom he was used to seeing in the sky over these woods at a certain hour around this time of year.

‘ _It must be a little after eight-thirty or so. Closer to nine o’clock._ ’

He drew the curtains closed, turned back around, and… it took him a moment. (In all fairness, in retrospect he was fairly certain he had been running on _no_ caffeine at the time.) Then it occurred to Ford _why_ he felt so uneasy about the fact that he’d woken up to an empty room.

‘ _Where are the kids?_ ’

He felt a spike of adrenaline hit his system, which largely woke him up. He currently wasn’t armed. He took a frozen moment to sidle up to and listen hard at the door.

‘ _I hear the TV on in the other room, but nothing else. Why is everything so quiet?_ ’

He was already (still) clothed. It was only the work of a few moments for him to slip on both his boots.

The niblings had kept their word to him earlier; Ford had to unlock his bedroom door to exit it. He did just that and silently yanked opened the door, stepping out into the hallway.

‘ _Please, please let them be alright,_ ’ Ford thought as he hurried down the hallway. But Ford couldn’t quite curse himself for falling asleep, only perhaps for sleeping so very long. Because Ford quite literally hadn’t had any viable alternative to falling asleep. He’d been unable to think clearly or react appropriately under the circumstances. (--He’d almost shot his own brother, out of pure stress reaction. He hardly dared think the thought, what might have happened if… if...)

In retrospect, he could hardly believe that he’d fallen asleep _holding onto_ Bill Cipher the night before, with the sort of abstract half-asleep notion driving him that one only really encountered in the form of dream-logic. For him to have thought that _that_ had somehow been a safer option than… than actually tying Bill up, gagging and dumping Bill in a locked closet away from everyone else for the night… to think that he would wake up and be able to respond faster to Bill, fast-enough to stop Bill, _so long as he held onto Bill himself_ …

The idea was truly absurd. He had no idea now how he’d become so thoroughly convinced of it, why he’d latched onto the idea so tightly. And, frankly, he similarly couldn’t conceive of how Stan had managed to coax the idea -- any idea that might allow him to sleep -- out of him in the first place, let alone convinced Bill to go along with it once-voiced. _Why_ Stanley had let Ford go through with it though -- even encouraged it -- was obvious of course: Stan had wanted him to sleep.

...But at what cost had that surety come? What must Stan have promised Bill for Bill’s compliance in the matter? Stan knew full-well that he and Bill were enemies. Bill had no reason to _help_ him, and _every_ reason to **hurt** him, by comparison. Bill had clearly been displeased at the very thought of leaving him alone at Mabel’s insistence that afternoon, and had threatened to _stab him in the eye_ later that very same evening in a fit of rage -- a _dire_ threat when coming from Bill, given what a _lack of sight_ meant to the dream demon with a single, All-Seeing Eye.

He could hardly believe that Bill was ‘halfway there’ to being on ‘their side’, no matter how insistent Stanley had been in saying that was the case that morning. The very idea itself was insane. And even if it were somehow true -- _whatever_ that might mean for them -- Ford very much doubted that Bill’s definition of “Stan’s side” included _him_. He wasn’t part of Stan’s supposedly-working ‘agreement’, after all. And, more importantly, what did ‘halfway there’ mean when it came to the niblings?

Turning the corner and hurrying into the living room, Ford felt a jolt of relief upon seeing the kids. Dipper and Mabel were sitting in the middle of the living room floor, reading a book and working on a scrapbook, respectively.

Ford had no qualms at all in walking directly over to them, crouching down, and immediately gathering them both up in a hug. --Not least of which because when he’d first entered the room, they’d both looked up at him, and Mabel had immediately grinned and held out her arms to him in the way she always did when she was requesting a hug.

“Grunkle Ford! You’re awake!” Mabel exclaimed happily, and gave him a good squeeze back, and he smiled back and curled an arm around her a bit more in return. She was a bit less bright-eyed than he was used to seeing in her, but that was likely due to the late hour and interrupted sleep of the night before.

Dipper’s eyes were drooping a bit as well, though he was clearly making a valiant and conscious effort to keep himself awake and alert. “Sorry we weren’t there when you woke up, Great-Uncle Ford,” Dipper said quietly to him, as he gave him his own hug, “We thought it might be better to keep an eye out for Grunkle Stan after dinner, instead of coming back to your room, because…”

Dipper turned his head to glance over at Stan, and Ford nodded to Dipper. “I understand,” he told Dipper in low tones, glancing up as well. Stan was sitting in his recliner chair, and Bill was… in his lap, almost. Sitting across Stan’s lap, really, with his head pillowed in his arms on the arm of the recliner, at Stan’s right. They were both rousing now, but when he’d first walked in they’d both seemed almost three-quarters asleep where they’d been sitting, staring at the TV, unmoving, eyes half-lidded, the sound on the set on but droning low. Leaving a dozing Stan out in the living room, alone with Bill when Bill might either remain awake or wake up first, was certainly a concern, both for Stan and for the rest of them.

As Ford frowned at their positioning, Dipper told him quietly, “That’s normal; they do that a lot.” When Ford glanced down at him, he added, “Bill tried taking his sofa chair once. I think maybe Grunkle Stan does it that way so Bill can’t complain that he doesn’t get to sit in it, no matter who sits in it first.”

Ford sighed tiredly, pulling away from the niblings a bit, and rubbed at his eyes. _Of course_ Bill would try to claim the closest thing the Shack had to a throne, for his own. It was a tidy configuration, though -- Bill was sitting on the cushion slightly to Stan’s right, next to his legs, his knees folded up over Stan’s lap, feet tucked in along Stan’s left leg and likely almost touching the cushions of the chair back.

What made it odd was that Bill fully had his back to Stanley, and Stanley had his right hand buried in Bill’s hair -- which was now short again. It looked like Stan had his other hand on either Bill’s waist or his hip, as well. That was odd, because Ford would have expected Bill to be facing Stanley to be interacting with him, not effectively showing his back to someone who could potentially stab him in it.

‘ _And_ ,’ Ford noted, clenching his jaw as he looked at them, ‘ _Bill clearly does not seem to have a problem with_ Stan _touching him, either._ ’

Ford slowly drew away from the niblings and stood up, as the niblings gathered up their things off of the floor. They were not quite next to the TV, but off to the side. They _were_ more than five feet away; closer to seven or eight feet, actually.

Stan didn’t quite scrub his hand through Bill’s hair in an effort to… get his attention? To rouse Bill somewhat?... but Stan did rub his fingers fairly rapidly back-and-forth over the top of Bill’s skull, and it certainly seemed to have that effect -- Bill grumbled a bit and shifted in place, pushing his head into the chair arm oddly, while squeezing his eyes shut then blinking them open. Bill lifted his head up slightly as Stan lifted Bill’s legs up and out of the way to stand up and ‘get free’ of him, as it were.

“Stanley--” Bill began in fatigue-roughened tones, pushing himself up by an elbow after his feet hit the floor, then stopped as he yawned hugely.

Ford watched as Bill snapped his mouth shut abruptly and blinked, eyes wide. Then Bill narrowed his eyes and lowered his head, hunching his shoulders in tired annoyance while he flatly said, “ **Why**.”

“It’s your snooze alarm,” Stan said good-naturedly, with a yawn of his own. “Time to get to bed, kid.”

“Nn-!” Bill began, which he’d probably meant to be a ‘no’, except that he yawned again in response to Stan’s yawn, then looked rather appalled with himself afterwards. And Bill was not happy about the yawning, if the way he collapsed back in the chair and started not-quite-attacking the sides of his head with his own fingers was any indication, along with the stiff-legged midair kicking and very frustrated-sounding noises emanating from him.

Ford heard a slight snicker and glanced down at Dipper, who seemed almost darkly amused by Bill’s annoyance, by the thin smile he had going, alongside the narrow-eyed look he was sending back Bill’s way. Mabel, by contrast, was simply smiling outright at Bill, then looked up at Ford, still-smiling, and gave him another hug at his side -- one-armed this time since she was holding onto her scrapbook with the other. Ford absently dropped a hand to her shoulder and rubbed it back and forth soothingly as an affirmation: he was here, he was grateful for her hugs, he was… fine, for the most part.

Stan, for his part, sighed heavily as he turned off the TV, then turned back to Bill.

“C’mon, none of that, now,” Ford watched Stan tell Bill, reaching out to bat his hands down away from the sides of his head.

“Should be able to _control thiiiiis_ …” Bill complained outright, sounding almost petulant as he stomped his feet into the floor from his still-seated position.

“You’re tired, kid,” Ford heard Stan inform Bill. “Bein’ human and tired means you can control less stuff less well.”

Ford heard Bill mutter something out that sounded like, “No fair; so dumb; HATE THIS,” then “Stupid human-ish body,” as he slumped down farther in Stan’s chair. His head nearly disappeared out of sight below the armrests, except for the top of his blue haired head still barely peeking out above it.

“C’mon, kid. What did I tell you about fallin’ asleep out here?” Stan said, reaching down.

“...’Don’t do it’,” Ford heard Bill say sarcastically, reciting the words as if by rote, as Stan literally picked Bill up by the waist and hauled him upright.

“Right,” Stan said, as he finished settling Bill upright on his feet, then took a step back to give him a little space. “There ya go. Off to bed, now.”

Bill rubbed at his eyes with loose fists, posture slightly slumped forward, and looked up at Stan.

Then he looked over at Ford, and blinked hard. And in doing so, Bill suddenly seemed to go from a half-asleep state to a straight-backed and clearly-forced alertness.

Ford wasn’t sure what Bill saw on his face, or what Bill was thinking, but when Bill turned back to Stan, fists down and clenched at his sides, the next words out of his mouth were an adamant, “I want tea.”

“Okay,” Stan said smoothly. “You go off to bed, then, and I’ll make some tea and bring it to you.”

Ford stared at his brother aghast, because he could not believe that Stanley would effectively _wait on Bill hand and foot_ like a-- a...

...wait. Why did Bill look so angry?

Ford blinked as Bill’s response to Stan’s words in no way, shape, or form, matched up to what he’d expected at all. Bill should have been… _smug_ perhaps, at Stan’s compliance, not...

“I. can. make. it. myself.” Bill slowly ground out.

“You sure can,” Stan said, just as smoothly as before. “But if _all_ you want is tea, then it doesn’t matter who makes it, or _where_ you drink it, _right?_ ” Stan asked almost... rhetorically? “Unless…” Stan drew out, as Bill clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides, “...that’s just an _excuse_ for not really getting what you really _do_ want,” Stan put out there. “So why don’t you just tell me what you _do_ want, instead. Yeah?”

Bill frowned up at Stan. He tossed a glare Ford’s way.

Then Bill crossed his arms across his chest and said flatly, “I want you to tell me this: how many times are you planning on letting that Stanford try to kill you?”

Ford went rigid. For a moment he had trouble breathing.

“Eh,” said Stanley, shrugging at Bill. “At least one more time than he already has.”

Ford stared at his brother, stunned.

Bill narrowed his eyes at Stan. “...That’s not a number. That’s an _equation_ ,” Bill said, sounding suspicious, of all things.

“Not your problem to solve,” Stan told Bill blasely, looking down at him.

Bill’s lips curled up in a snarl. “--Yes, IT IS, _Stanley_ ,” Bill ground out. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be overseeing the agreement.”

“So?” said Stan. “I can handle Ford.”

“No, YOU CAN’T,” Bill said, glaring up at Stan, then he seemed to tear his gaze away to the side, looking furious for some reason. “You want to try and tie me up in strings of relationships that, what, go down two, three, four, _five levels_ deep, while YOU can’t even handle _ONE_ without getting yourself STRANGLED and HANGED and BURNED by it?!?” Bill snarled out. “HA!” He turned his angry gaze back on Stan. “WELL THEN, _Stanley_ , let me **SIMPLIFY** this for you!”

Ford looked on in horror as Bill seemed to brace himself in place, then poked a finger straight into Stanley’s chest and said, “You go off and get yourself killed? Then _you’re not around_ to hold anyone to the agreement anymore! --You die, and I will _immediately_ bring down that stupid little barrier you’ve got up around this place and _KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THE OTHERS WHO IS PART OF THE AGREEMENT_ ,” Bill threatened Stan. “UNDERSTAND?!”

There was a long pause.

“I hear ya, kid,” Stan said, not sounding concerned in the least, and Stan’s affirmation left Ford’s stomach feeling like it had dropped down to his knees. For some reason, Stan’s response left Bill looking frustrated though, instead.

“Stanley…” Ford said warningly, feeling more than a little sick. Because he knew Bill, and Bill had _meant_ that threat. And if Stanley didn’t realize that he did, then--

“It’s fine, Ford,” Stan told him without looking at him. “Kid’s just worried about me, is all.”

Ford opened his mouth, about to inform Stan, ‘ _No, he isn’t!_ ’

“--I’m NOT _worried!_ ” Bill spat out in protest before he could, and Bill was practically bristling at this point, not looking at any of them. “You’re the agreement holder! You have things you’re supposed to do, and DYING isn’t one of them! So hold it, and hold to it!”

“I am, kid. I hear ya.”

Ford closed his mouth and looked between them both uneasily.

Bill’s hands were at his sides, clenched into fists. His shoulders were rigid, and he was staring straight forward without lifting his head up to meet Stan’s eyes.

Stan was looking down at Bill, standing in a neutral stance, and he seemed dead tired but calm. Unflappable, almost.

“Go to bed, kid,” Stan said, looking at Bill. “You’re getting grouchy. Probably about to yawn again.”

“NO MORE _YAWNING_ ,” Bill protested, saying the last like it was a curse word.

He didn’t move right away, but it wasn’t three seconds later that he was stalking off down the hallway in the direction of Stan’s bedroom.

...after having grabbed up the cushions from Stan’s chair, for some unknown but probably nefarious reason.

Stan let out a slow breath and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck as he turned towards the three of them.

“I’ll get him his tea later,” Stan said, then turned to the niblings. “Dipper, Mabel, you two go upstairs and get ready for bed, yeah?”

“Yes, Grunkle Stan,” came a slightly off-beat chorus of two voices, who then each clasped their own books of differing types more firmly to their chests and turned away to go upstairs. Mabel tossed Ford another reassuring smile as she stepped away from him, before she followed her twin brother upstairs.

Ford winced slightly as he heard the door to Stan’s bedroom slam. Hard.

He almost brought up the possibility of Bill having done that from the hallway so that he could still sneak around to listen in on them or go after the kids... except he then heard what sounded like someone kicking a piece of furniture -- likely the side of a bed from the sound of it -- over and over and over again in sheer frustration, from what was almost certainly the inside of said room. And muffled yelling. Because now Bill was throwing a temper tantrum. Wonderful.

“Stanley…” Ford began, looking over at his brother, as the racket continued, ongoing.

“Kid ain’t dumb,” his brother told him, “He knows the walls ain’t that thick,” and it was an echo of the tone of voice Stan had used when he’d said ‘you can see him’, when Bill had left the door to the outside porch open earlier that day. Then Stan added almost philosophically, “But he does get real frustrated one hell of a lot.”

Ford stared at him, because was his brother _really_ missing the point that badly? Bill’s lack of self-control was of _serious_ concern, and--

“C’mon,” Stan told him, waving a hand at him as he walked by him. “Let’s get you some dinner.”

\---


	3. Chapter 3

\---

_‘C’mon. Let’s get you some dinner.’_

Ford sighed heavily at this.

“What are you, turning into ma?” Ford complained, even as he turned and followed his brother into the kitchen. “You can’t fix everything with food, Stan.”

“Did I say I was doin’ that?” Stan told him as he opened up the fridge and rummaged around in it. “I’m just getting you some dinner. You were in your room for about eight hours, and the kids said you were actually sleeping.”

“Stan…” he began, then stopped when Stanley pulled a plastic-wrapped plate out of the fridge and dropped it down in front of his place at the kitchen table.

“You can eat while we talk,” he was told. And before he could interject, Stan slapped down a set of silverware next to it and added, “Or eat first, and then we talk. --You want coffee?”

Ford opened his mouth to argue… then closed it, grimaced, then said, “Yes, please.”

Stan turned around and started futzing about with the coffee maker.

“Do I not rate a warm meal, just a warm drink?” Ford asked his brother only about half-sarcastically, as he sat down at the table and barely gave a glance at his meal.

“You really want me to heat that up for you?” he heard his brother say so dubiously that he stopped and checked himself, pausing to remove the plastic wrapping and see exactly what it was that Stanley had laid down in front of him.

“...Ah,” Ford said, enlightened (but not exactly happy with what he saw) as he looked over the slightly-soggy looking tuna fish salad sandwich, cold pasta salad, and garden greens that were adorning his plate.

“Same thing the rest of us ate,” he was told.

“I wasn’t complaining,” Ford objected. Out loud.

“Uh huh.”

Ford sighed. It wasn’t as though he was a picky eater. He just preferred not to eat soggy foods if he could help it, especially when they were finger foods. ...Maybe he could eat the filling out from the middle of the sandwich with a spoon or fork? No, that would just prove Stan right. Perhaps it wasn’t _quite_ as soggy as it looked...

He shook himself and decided to avoid the question of the questionable sandwich for the moment, picking up a fork to dig into the rest of it, and then did just that. He only glanced up briefly when Stan set down a can of carbonated soda in front of him before sitting himself down at the end of the table closest to him with a soda of his own in-hand.

Ford nodded his thanks for the small bit of starter-caffeine and popped open the can to take a swig, as Stan did the same with his own.

He ate in relative silence to the noise of the kids getting ready for bed upstairs, and Bill finally calming down in Stan’s bedroom (or, more likely, simply having to stop due to sheer exhaustion) with a final loud creaking ‘whump’ that was probably him collapsing bodily onto the bed in there.

Ford sent Stan a sideways look as he set down his fork. Stan sighed heavily and rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

“It ain’t that bad,” Stan said, looking dead tired as he took another swig of his soda. Ford didn’t say anything, or send any more looks his way. “It ain’t as bad as you’re thinking.” Ford looked down and gingerly picked up his sandwich, couldn’t help grimacing slightly -- yes, it was in fact soggy. “It ain’t as bad as all that.”

“Yes, Stan,” Ford said neutrally, still not looking at him. “And by the time you’ve moved on to such even _more_ lowered expectations as trying to convince yourself that ‘it **isn’t** as bad as it _could_ be,’ we’ll all be looking outside at the flames and the madness of the next Weirdmageddon.”

There was quiet as he took a bite of his sandwich.

“Funny,” said Stan, in an odd tone of voice.

Ford slid his eyes over to him, finished chewing his bite. “What is?”

“That you think I’m not already there.”

Ford turned his head to look at his brother straight-on.

“Ford,” Stan began almost ponderously, “I’m not an idiot.” He took in a breath. “What part of ‘I’m just trying to have the ancient _immortal_ alien space wizard’ -- _who can come back to life_ after being **killed** \-- ‘ _not_ hurt and murder people who aren’t trying to kill or hurt him first _right then_ ’ in the moment, ‘ _only_ when they’re actually trying to _do_ it _right_ then,’ _don’t_ you get? --Or do you not realize that maybe the reason I’m putting it _that_ way, is _because we’ve all tried to **murder** him at least once already_, except we _aren’t_ trying to do that again _right this instant_.”

Ford blinked at him, then stared.

“It’s not as bad as it could be, Ford -- _it’s worse_ ,” Stan said. “I’m _tryin’_ to make it better, but when you go attacking him like you did yesterday…” Ford watched his brother shake his head. “I can’t ask him not to fight back when somebody attacks him. I can’t ask him to do something that _I_ wouldn’t do,” Stan told him. “That’s a non-starter. He’ll never go for it. No way.”

“Stanley--”

“Do you have any idea how close you came to breaking the agreement I’ve got with the kid yesterday, because I couldn’t stop you from gettin’ physical with him?” Stan told him. “ _Twice?_ \--Because maybe the kids weren’t clear with you about this, but a _big_ part of me bein’ the ‘agreement holder’ of this whole thing means that I’m the one who’s supposed to be protecting _everybody_ from outside attacks -- or at least trying to,” Stan said. “Kid thinks I’m not trying hard enough, or can’t follow through when he really needs it? Agreement’s off. Just.-Like.- _That_ ,” Stan said, snapping his fingers together at the last.

“Well then, maybe you shouldn’t have agreed to Bill killing the kids if you can’t hold up ‘your end’ of a bad deal in the first place!” Ford snapped back at him.

“ _What?_ ” Stan looked more than a little taken aback, then frowned at him. “It’s an agreement, Ford, not a bad deal,” he told Ford. “And I didn’t agree to anything like that. --I just said that I heard him.”

“It’s the same thing!”

Stan’s frown deepened. “No, it isn’t,” Ford was told. “When I say that I heard the kid, it means that _I heard the kid_. --It doesn’t mean I agree with him. It doesn’t mean I _disagree_ with him, either. It just means that I _heard_ him. --No,” Stan said, cutting him off, jabbing a finger in his direction, “Don’t start with me on this, I _know_ what I’m talking about, here. I literally _had a conversation with the kid_ about this. That’s what it means to him. ‘Hearing him’ is _hearing him_. Not distracted, able to recall it later, the sounds actually hit my ears and my hearing aid was in and on and working, _hearing_ him.”

Ford frowned, while Stan leaned back in his chair and grimaced. “Hell, something like half the time we spend together talking is all about defining vocabulary,” his brother informed him. “--English ain’t the triangle’s first language, Ford. I need to make sure we’re not talking past each other, misunderstanding things, and I’m doing just that. And talking the triangle’s language is a lot easier and faster than trying to make him agree with how I usually say things, instead -- believe me, I got that one quick,” Stan told him.

“Then that just means that we’ll misunderstand you instead,” Ford pointed out with ruthless logic.

Stanley sent him a look. “Shouldn’t be that hard. You hear me telling the kid something, just assume it’s in insane-triangle-talk until you get me to translate it back into normal-people-speech for you.”

“Stanley--”

“--Look, Ford,” Stan said, almost struggling upright from his chair, as he got to his feet. “I’m exhausted.” As he passed the sink, he grabbed the towel for the dishes up and tossed it to him. “I think we both know you can run circles around my brain with half your brain tied behind your back easily, even when I’m not.” Ford wiped his hands with the towel and set it to the side, as he watched Stan move over to the coffee machine and got a mug out from the cupboard. “And I’m not gonna be able to stay up long enough to help you out by listening to you talk yourself through how to solve all the world’s problems in just one night.” Stan poured a cup from the pot, then turned and set the mug down in front of him. “So how’s about, just for the next hour or so, we focus on what’s gonna keep you from driving yourself up the wall until the next time we talk, and able to still sleep at night without me having to drug you senseless or somethin’ to do it.”

Ford grimaced at the reminder of the threat Stan had made to him the night before. ...The worst part was, he knew his brother wasn’t above doing just that, if he thought it was for his own good. And last night, when faced with the prospect of being forced into a drugged stupor from which he would be unable to wake no matter what happened to him, Ford had come up with the ‘holding onto Bill in his sleep’ idea, instead. He still wasn’t entirely sure which of those two ideas was actually worse.

...No, that was a lie. It was the first one. The first one was worse. The ability to wake up was crucial when having to deal with Bill.

Ford wrapped his hands around the coffee mug he’d been given and took a deep breath.

He downed the whole mug in one go...

...let out a breath as he swore he could just about _feel_ his brain waking up properly...

...set down the mug back onto the table...

...then looked up at his brother.

“All right,” said Ford. “Let’s start with precisely what, exactly, you told Bill you meant when you said that you would ‘help’ him. Because I am _certain_ that he was neither impressed by _nor_ satisfied with so vague and undefined a statement as that,” Ford said with no small certainty.

“Really?” Stan said, as he got himself another can of soda from the fridge. “ _That’s_ what you want to ask me?” His brother tossed him an odd look as he shoved the fridge door shut. “Knowing _that_ is going to help you sleep better at night?”

“Knowing how deep my own brother is already in, with the demonic triangle who wants to take over this dimension, rather than having to _guess_ at how bad it is, will help me to figure out a solution that will help me to sleep better at night, _yes_ ,” Ford informed him sharply. “Especially when I very much doubt that Bill is as ‘already in too deep’ with you as you seem so convinced that he is. --And you’re avoiding the question,” he said firmly.

Stan let out a sigh, shaking his head as he headed back over to his seat and sat down. “It ain’t a big mystery, Ford,” Stan told him, popping the tab on the soda can. “I just promised to do what anybody who gave half a damn about any kid would do for ‘em.” He paused to take a swig of soda.

“Which is?” Ford asked.

Stan set his soda can down on the table, still keeping it in-hand. “I promised him food, clothing, shelter, and schooling.”

Ford blinked at him.

“And?” Ford said, because that could not possibly be all of it.

“And that I’d back him up if somebody tried to pick a fight with him if he didn’t bait them into doing it, or start the stupid thing first. Not like it’s portal science, here,” Stan told him, tapping at the side of his can with a finger as he stared at it.

“... _And?_ ” Ford prompted him again.

Stan sighed. “And after what the kid tried to pull on me the second afternoon, I knew that wasn’t gonna be enough, so I came up with the mutual nonaggression agreement thing with him. Because he needed more structure than that, and an explanation, of what to do and not-do in order to keep out of fights with people, because he doesn’t know how to win a fight without killing somebody, and that’s probably going to get him killed if I don’t do something about it.” He took another swig of his soda. “That’s really all it is, Ford. Just one long explanation of how to be around other human beings without anyone getting too hurt or dying, and how to tell when somebody ain’t up for ‘playing nice’. I ain’t even asking him to treat us any differently than I’d be asking him to treat anyone out on the street. It’s all the same thing. I’m just trying to keep him from getting into fights with people when he doesn’t have to, to stay alive, maybe keep anyone from dying.”

“And how well has _that_ been working out for you,” Ford said dryly, as Stan took another swig of his soda.

“Fine with everybody else _except you_ ,” was the shot he got right back across the bow, and Stan sounded very irritated at the last.

Ford held onto his temper with both hands. Because, well, that was a lie. Bill was getting into fights with the kids, and that was not acceptable or okay. But if he tried to fight this particular point out with Stan again, he knew they’d be up all night and _still_ not get anywhere. Because when his brother got stubborn? His brother got _stubborn_. And from the sounds of things, this was one of those things that Stanley was digging his heels in on, for worse or for... even-worse-than-that.

So Ford gritted his teeth and set that to the side for a moment. And instead, he asked his brother, “What did you have to promise Bill for his compliance.” Best to hear the worst of it up-front.

Except instead of answering right away, his brother just stared at him like… like he thought there was something wrong with him.

“Ford…” Stan said slowly, staring at him. “I told you already.”

And now it was Ford’s turn to stare. “What?”

Stan stared at him, then rubbed a hand across his mouth. Stan dropped his hand. “Okay.” Ford looked on as Stan looked away, took in a breath, and let it out again. “Okay.” Stan breathed in and out again a second time, before he turned back to him again and said, “Ford. I told the kid that I’d give him food. And clothing. And shelter. And schooling. And that I’d back him up if he ever gets into a fight that he didn’t start. _And I actually mean it,_ ” his brother told him, emphatically. “That is what I’m gonna do. That’s what I’ve _been_ doing. And I told him before, inside my head, right before I punched him dead, that his one mistake was messing with my family.” And now he was looking at Ford like he was almost worried about… him? “The agreement is just one _really long explanation_ for the kid, so that the kid understands how to make it all _work_. To not mess that up completely without meaning to. That’s it.”

“That’s… _it?_ ” Ford echoed.

“That’s it,” Stan repeated.

Ford stared at Stanley, his twin. His brother, the con-man.

And then he began to truly feel angry, because...

No. No. That could not _possibly_ be ‘it’. That could _not_ be all there was to it, and if Stanley thought so, then he was either a fool or a-- or a--

Ford glared at Stanley, his brother. A con-man, and _pathological liar._

Ford closed his eyes, because he could not _look_ at his brother right now. He clenched his jaw, fisted his hands in his lap, and barely held onto his temper. It took a strength of will he had not known he possessed to keep himself from standing up, walking over to his brother, and _throttling_ him. As it was, he was shaking with rage.

‘ _Don’t do it,_ ’ he told himself. ‘ _Don’t do it. You don’t **know** he’s lying to you. You don’t know that. You don’t know that yet.’_

He told himself that there had to be something he wasn’t seeing. Something that Stanley must think was obvious enough to not have to say outright. Something that he didn’t know yet. Stanley thought about people differently than he did. That was all. That was all.

‘ _He could be lying to Bill,_ ’ he told himself, as the thought crept up on him. ‘ _Not you. He could be lying to Bill instead._ ’

Ford couldn’t lie very well -- not compared to his brother. Stanley telling him something outright was trouble, in that sense, because Ford knew that if he lost his temper, he might very well blurt out something Stan had told him verbatim. And Stanley had passing odd ideas of what constituted a lie. Not sharing information? Not a lie, in Stanley’s book. A ‘lie of omission’ was something of an oxymoron to him. And when Stan left out information on purpose…

Stan more often than not lied to family only in an effort to try and keep them safe. It had happened with Stan denying the existence of magic to the kids for most of last summer, so Ford had heard. It had happened with the portal, Stan continuing to lie about the portal even after he’d been caught out by the feds, in trying to get him -- Ford -- back. And it had happened in the Fearamid, when they’d swapped clothing and pretended to be each other, tricking Bill into entering Stan’s mind but also tricking the kids in the process of performing their lying act.

Stan had lied about the weirdness of the town, in order to try and keep the kids away from it, to protect them from it. He hadn’t told the kids about the portal for fear of someone trying to stop him from getting Ford back, and Stan hadn’t realized the true danger of the portal at the time -- of Bill and of the forming of the rift -- Ford understood that. And in order to stop Bill, to save the kids, Stan had sacrificed himself...

His brother was _not_ on Bill Cipher’s side. Not yet. Because the kids… Stan would never risk them intentionally. Stan would never _hurt_ them _intentionally_ \--

He could still fix this. He could still stop Bill, and fix whatever Bill had been doing, unravel whatever game Bill had been playing with his brother and undo the damage, before Stanley was--

Ford forced himself to pull in a long, slow breath. He had thought he’d hated Bill before. But the thought of Bill messing with his _brother_ …

It made Ford shake in place, worse than he had before. It made Ford’s hands ache as he flexed his fingers, acutely conscious of the empty holster at his side. It made him wish he’d shot Cipher with his gun last night, consequences be damned -- and not just once, either. It made him irrational, and _not care_ how irrational he was being about things. It made him want to hurt Cipher until he screamed in pain, not laughter, to kill him over and over again until he stopped coming back. Because his brother--

“Ford…” Stan sounded uneasy to his ears. “You maybe want to tell me what you’re thinkin’ right now?”

Ugly thoughts of torturing Bill with shots from his electricity gun. Breaking his bones. Smashing in his teeth. Putting out his eyes. One by one. _Slowly_. Making Bill take him seriously. Making him beg for mercy, beg for him to stop, and then… _not stopping_. Because _Bill_ wouldn’t stop what _he_ was doing unless he was stopped, unless Ford continually stopped him, and Bill hardly deserved less than an eternity of suffering for what he’d already done, anyway. ...And all that was _before_ Ford would even get anywhere close to his most pressing problem with Cipher at the moment, the latest in a long line of offenses: ‘messing with my brother right now’, at the end of a very long list.

It was irrational. A revenge fantasy that would never, could never happen. It helped no-one. It wasn’t useful. And Ford was better than that. He wasn’t _Bill_. Ford didn’t _torture_ people, just for fun, to get what he wanted, and he certainly wouldn’t _enjoy_ it! Bill might never get what he deserved, but that wasn’t Ford’s worry. All he wanted to do -- all he’d _ever_ really _wanted_ to do -- was to kill the dream demon and end the threat of Bill Cipher for good. He’d just find a solution that they could all agree on, to kill Cipher once and for all, and that would be the end of it. It was fine -- it _would be_ fine.

Ford forced himself through a deep breathing exercise, eyes still closed. Count of ten. Then twenty. Then another. It took him a few more moments after that even, before he was finally able to say, in somewhat even tones, “I _really_ don’t think you want to know what’s going through my mind right now, Stanley.”

...Because, morality of torturing a mass murderer aside, it wasn’t as though his brother would appreciate the sentiment of Ford wanting to protect or avenge him, if ever Ford shared it. Stan had always been the protector when they’d been growing up, and his protectiveness of his sibling had extended to the niblings now, as well. And seemingly as a consequence of this, Stan generally seemed to become ostensibly angry whenever anyone implied that he might not be able to take care of a problem of his own by himself.

As far as Stanley was concerned, he didn’t need outside assistance to handle something he considered solely his own problem, and no-one else’s concern. So no, Ford doubted that Stanley would be pleased to hear anything he was thinking just then. Especially when it would involve Ford ‘stealing’ his gun back from Dipper, so shortly after what had happened the night before, and going after...

“Yeah,” said Stan. “Probably not. But I’m thinkin’ maybe you still need to say it anyway,” his brother said. “...You’re looking kinda punch-y right now.”

Ford barked out a short laugh, head bowed.

“C’mon,” he heard his brother say. “I can take it. Can’t be worse than actually shooting me in the head.”

Ford’s head came up immediately and his eyes popped open. “That’s not--!” He hadn't fired off the electricity gun at Stan last night, he’d hadn’t fired it at all--! “I wasn’t in my _right mind_ when I--!” Ford began to explain frantically, then stopped at the look on Stanley’s face, feeling as though he’d somehow misstepped badly and was now falling down a very large hole. “I… I didn’t mean… that… I...”

And then Ford suddenly felt very, very cold, all at once, because now he knew. Now he _knew_ what Bill was going to use as leverage against him, between him and the rest of his family, and the worst part was--

The worst part was, Ford knew that he couldn’t even try to defend himself by saying that he wasn’t going to do it, that he hadn’t been going to do it. Because he’d been so angry, and so scared last night, just downright furious. He’d raised his gun and… his original intent had only been to threaten Stanley, yes, but… Ford _didn’t know_ if he would have stopped there. Because, at the time… in his mind… in a split-second Stanley had gone from being his brother to being his _enemy_ , and…

Ford shivered.

...what was even worse? Was that _Bill_ had been the one who’d acted to get the gun out of his hands, in his delirium. To ‘save’ Stanley. -- _From him_. And now if Ford said anything against him, all Bill would have to do is point to that incident and say, ‘oh, look at the paranoid delusional ramblings of _this_ madman again!’

\--Had that been what Bill had been angling for, all along? To turn his family against him in this way?

Ford shivered in place.

Stanley sighed.

“Ford, I know you weren’t thinking clearly last night,” his brother told him. “I told you this morning already: don’t worry about it.”

“But I…” What he’d nearly done had been inexcusable. And now Bill had-- ‘ _How could Stanley just…?_ ’

“Ford, I’m not an idiot, and neither are the kids. We all know you weren’t feeling well last night, yeah? None of us blame you for freaking out like that. --And believe me, I know _all about_ making real bad decisions when you’re runnin’ low on sleep and haven’t been eating, okay? Not gonna hold it against you.”

Ford felt floored. He’d thought… Surely the niblings must not have known, he’d thought, or they wouldn’t have been treating him like… like everything was _normal_ , this morning. --And Stanley. He’d expected…

Where were the recriminations? The accusations? The feelings of betrayal and hurt and fear that he wouldn’t know how to fix or field?

And some of what he was feeling must have shown on his face, because the next words out of his brother’s mouth were… “Ford, the hell? Do you _want_ me to hold it against you?” he heard his brother ask.

“I-- no,” Ford said. “No.” No, he didn’t. Of course not. --It was rather a relief that Stan didn’t feel that way about it! Mostly a relief. Something didn’t feel right about this, and... he just… “I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Eh, wasn’t the first time somebody’s pointed a gun at me ‘cause they’re not happy.”

“Stanley, are you honestly telling me that you’re _fine_ with me pointing a gun at you?” Ford said, shocked. Because if he was… then they needed to have a very different sort of conversation.

Stan gave him a funny look. “Of course not. Doesn’t mean I might not deserve it maybe sometimes,” but before Ford could protest that, Stan added, “I’d rather you didn’t than did,” and at that, Ford could do nothing but blurt out defensively in knee-jerk reaction:

“ _Then why did you bring it up!?!_ ”

There was a pause, in which Ford became fairly certain than his brother was actually considering whether or not to feed him a lie.

“ _ **Stanley!!**_ ”

“--I wasn’t bringing it up, okay!” Stan told him. “I was talkin’ about… something else,” he ended lamely, looking away from him.

“You’ve been _shot in the head_ bef--!?” Ford blurted out angrily, wondering who he was going to need to track down and kill, before his brain finally caught back up with him and he stopped himself dead-cold. Because he’d been on a one-track mindset, thinking of only _physically_ fatal shots, not…

He swallowed hard.

“You’re talking about the memory gun,” he said quietly.

Stan winced slightly and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “...Too soon?” he asked, giving Ford a half-sorry, half-rueful look.

Ford choked back a laugh that felt more like a sob.

“Nothing…” Ford had to stop for a moment, to compose himself. “Nothing will _ever_ be worse than having to shoot you in the head that day, Stanley,” he told his brother lowly.

Stan winced again and looked away.

But it was the simple, unvarnished truth. Ford meant it. Nothing would ever be worse than having killed Stanley, it was an absolute _miracle_ that his brother come back from that, that he’d…

...that…

Ford’s breath caught, and he felt himself go a little pale, because…

_How many times are you planning on letting that Stanford try to kill you?_

Ford swallowed hard.

“What did…” Oh, Ford did _not_ want to have to ask this, but Ford knew he had to know. “What did Bill have to say about…” Ford winced. “...Everything.”

Stan gave him an odd look. “You maybe want to be a little more specific there?”

Ford grimaced. “Everything that happened last night.” Ford pulled in a breath. “With me.” Ford grimaced. “Grabbing Bill, pointing the gun at him… Hitting him.” He didn’t regret it, exactly. Bill deserved far worse. He only regretted what Stan might have had to put up with afterwards, as a consequence of his own less-than-well-thought-out actions. “And all the rest of it.” Because what he really needed to know was what Bill had said about him pointing the electric gun at Stan, and… “Everything.”

To this, Stan simply rolled his eyes. “Believe it or not,” Stan told him, rubbing a hand over his face and looking even more tired, “The kid wasn’t even all that rant-y about it.”

Ford stared at him. “How many trees did he blow up instead,” he asked of his brother with perfect seriousness. Because if Bill was capable of exploding cryptids on the spot, he was certainly capable of turning his destructive wrath on the general surrounding area -- a pine-laden landscape -- and puns with dire implications were _not_ beneath him.

“Uh, _none_ ,” Stan said, giving him another odd look. “Why would you think he was blowing up trees?” Then he got an even odder look. “You really think you’d sleep through that?”

“I’ve slept through worse. And louder.” Ford didn’t feel a need to elaborate on how noisy some spaceships got. Or interdimensional marketplaces. Ford frowned instead. “Bill didn’t blow anything up.”

“No.”

“Or set anything on fire.”

“No.”

“Or--”

“-- _No_ ,” his brother told him, cutting him off. “He didn’t say anything about ‘everything’, or blow anything up, or set anything on fire -- unless turning on the stove under the tea kettle counts,” Stan told him. “Mostly he just grumbled a bit under his breath about strings and relationships and junk. ...Well, maybe a lot more than a bit,” Stan made a face at that.

Ford stared at him. Was Stan referring to what Bill had commented upon earlier, about ‘relationship strings’? “That _can’t_ have been all of it,” Ford said, then continued aghast as the thought occurred to him that maybe Stan didn’t know the whole of how Bill had blown off steam because... “--You didn’t let him go outside alone _again!_ ”

“No,” Stan said, frowning. “Neither of us went outside at all after… well, not after I reminded him to before breakfast, when you were out there and awake. Y’know, what with the whole, ‘I’m not gonna let him outta my sight or outside or too close to the kids at least until after you wake up again’ thing that you had me promise you?”

Oh, that was just _such_ a lie! “--His hair was short again this evening!” Ford pointed out angrily, straightening in his chair, because Bill had been back to looking male again that evening -- which meant he _had_ to have gone outside to change back -- and _who did Stanley think he was trying to fool?!_

"Yeah, it was,” Stan said. “‘Cause the kid wanted me to cut it, and I did.”

“And I am supposed to believe that Bill Cipher _let_ you take a pair of sharp scissors in-hand and _use_ them on him _that_ close to his body’s skull,” Ford said with a truckload of skepticism, because that would involve taking a sharp weapon up close and personal next to both of Bill brand-new eyes. _And brain_. Neither of which Bill could grow back if they were damaged too badly, not even with that _supposed_ ‘magical self-recovery’ of his -- Ford was almost-certain of it.

...Quite frankly, if Bill hadn’t looked so similar to himself -- his current human form, despite the gender change -- when he’d walked back into the house that morning, Ford would have assumed that Bill had found a way to switch bodies again on them -- and that would be an entirely different and far more horrifying sort of problem.

“Well, I don’t know what else to tell ya, Ford,” Stan told him. “Mabel sort of talked him into letting her play with his hair for a bit this afternoon, during lunch, and after about five minutes of _that_ he decided that he didn’t really like that at _all_ and pulled away from her, but Mabel kept pouting at him, so he told me to cut it all short again to ‘make her stop _looking_ at him like that!’” Stan parroted out with Bill’s cadence, which had Ford wincing hard. “So I took a pair of scissors to it and I cut it,” Stan told him matter-of-factly, with an accompanying shrug. “It was that, or let him try to hack away at it himself, _maybe_ using the bathroom mirror if we were lucky, and I remember Dipper telling me something about forks and Bill liking pain awhile ago that made _that_ sound like not such a great idea.”

Ford let out a breath.

“The clippings are in the trash over there,” Stan gestured at the kitchen garbage can. “What, you want to check?”

It probably spoke ill of him that Ford did, in fact, get up and check just that, but at least Stanley didn’t call him out on it.

The hair clippings were there. Blue and black locks. … _All_ blue, and _all_ black. So the coloring might very well be genetic in nature and in source. (‘Human-ish’ body, indeed. As if he didn’t have enough things to worry about already, when it came to Bill...)

Ford palmed and pocketed a few strands of it as a sample for testing, and decided to get himself another cup of coffee while he was up.

\---


	4. Chapter 4

\---

“You are honestly telling me that Bill Cipher decided that he did not want long hair anymore because Mabel _pouted at him too much_ ,” he cross-examined his brother, as he walked his now-full coffee cup back over to his seat at the table.

“Well, that’s the excuse,” Stan told him, taking another sip of cola. “But it’s probably also a trap.”

Ford almost froze in place in the middle of sitting down, then completed the motion. “...Trap?” he asked.

“Well, yeah,” Stan told him. “I mean, if you can’t tell the difference between when he’s male and when he’s female when he’s wearing baggy clothing like he changed into after breakfast today -- which, hey, I’m guessing you _can’t_ ‘cause he was still female tonight -- and you try to grab him while he’s like that…” Stan gave him an amused smile over his soda can. “I’m betting it’ll only have to happen _once_ before you decide you’re never gonna risk ever making _that_ mistake again.”

Ford shuddered.

“Heh. Thought so.”

“It’s _not funny_ ,” Ford gritted out angrily at his own brother. His own brother!

“Oh, c’mon Ford, it’s not like you’re _actually_ afraid of girls,” his brother said, grinning, then his grin fell. “Uh. Wait,” he said, starting to sound a little more concerned. “You’re not _actually_ \--"

“-- _Of course not!!_ ” Ford blurted out, feeling his face heat up.

“Ooooooookayyy...” Stan said slowly, like he was trying to find the back-door exit to this conversation, post-haste.

“That’s not--” Ford buried his face in his hands.

“I mean, uh. You _do_ know that Mabel is a--”

“-- _ **It’s something else** , all right?!?!_” which Ford really did **not** want to talk about with his brother. Or anyone else. _Ever._

“Uh.” Stan sounded a little taken aback, then he paused for a moment and said almost thoughtfully, “Bad experience with the carpet?”

Ford dropped his hands. “What?” Was that supposed to be a… euphemism of some kind?

“Well, uh.” Stan scratched his head. “I mean, you and Dipper both have a problem with the whole Bill-being-able-to-be-a-female-but-still-being-a-guy thing. But Mabel doesn’t. So... “ Stan tilted his head to the side. “I mean, it can’t have anything to do with the whole Bill-being-inside-your-head-at-least-once thing, right? ‘Cause _I_ don’t have that problem, and he was inside my head, too,” Stan said...

...and Ford was too stunned by Stan’s flippancy on the subject to try and correct his _gross_ miscomprehension as to the _vast_ differences between ‘having Bill in your head’ and ‘having Bill take over your body’ to--

...and Stan continued on obliviously, completely apropos of nothing: “But Dipper and Mabel accidentally bodyswapped that one time with that old carpet of yours, yeah? And they said they kinda didn’t like being in each other’s bodies, and they’re _twins_. So, yeah. Gottta be the gender-swap thing then, right? Guy who looks like a girl? Happened to Dipper, but Mabel got the opposite, so she’s fine. And hey, since Bill did the same thing to himself on purpose as Dipper had happen to him, kinda? Only without the carpet, it was just him? Then I figure...” Stan gave him a long look, and hooked an elbow over the edge of the table, to lean in slightly, almost conspiratorially. “Did you have a bad date, Ford?”

“What?” Ford wheezed out, leaning backwards away from his brother, because _what?!_

“I mean, I get it,” Stan said, holding up his hands and backing off. “It was the seventies. Lotsa experimentation going on. All that ‘expanding your mind’ stuff. Maybe you went to that Woodstick festival thing the town holds every year, met a cute flower-power girl who liked the same music that you do? And maybe she was nerdy, too, and you got to talking with her about all sorts of that kinda stuff, about ‘gender constructs’ and ‘new experiences’ and things. And then you were like, ‘hey, wait a minute, I have a bodyswapping carpet at home, we could totally do that actually!’ And she was all bright-eyed and way, _way_ too interested, and--”

Ford had no idea where this was going -- well, no, actually he _did_ have an idea, a very very horrible idea, he just didn’t know how exactly Stanley had _gotten_ there -- but all he did know was that he absolutely wanted Stan to “--Please, stop talking. _Now_. Please.”

Stan stopped talking.

Ford took a deep breath in and let it out again.

“There was no date with the carpet,” he told Stan. “-- _You know what I mean, Stan!_ ” he added quickly next.

“Right,” said Stan.

Ford took in another deep breath. “It… actually has more to do with Bill having been able to… take over my body... at times. ...A long time ago.”

“Oh.” said Stan. “Right. ...Uh.” Stan didn’t seem to know what to do with that information. “Huh. O-kay...”

...And now Ford had a suspicion that the reason Stan had been so blase about the whole thing earlier, was that he actually hadn’t _known_ that Bill had possessed him before. Which meant that the niblings -- Dipper in particular -- likely hadn’t ever told him.

Ford massaged his temples, to try and help dispel the headache that hadn’t yet quite gone away. ...Maybe he just needed more coffee.

He drained his mug and set it back down.

“So.” Stan tapped his fingers against the can. “You know I got rid of the carpet when we were cleaning out all the other Cipher stuff, right?”

“Yes, Stanley, I was aware of that.”

“Right. Good.” Stan let out a breath, and gave him a small half-smile. “One less thing to worry about, then!”

Ford looked up at him oddly. “My somehow managing to get a date with a girl is something I don’t have to worry about… when I don’t have an electron carpet?” he ended on a low note, feeling slightly depressed, because he hadn’t ever managed that with a human woman even when he’d had the old shag rug. ...Did Stan really think that girls were that into that sort of thing? Ford supposed it was possible. Mabel was a girl, and she _did_ like knitting… The carpet hadn’t been knitted, though; it had been crocheted, he was fairly certain.

Was getting a kiss from a reasonably attractive human female his age who didn’t think his hands were creepy and gross _really_ too much to ask of the universe?

“Uh,” said Stan. “I was more talking about, y’know, the kid not being able to trick you into walking on it with him and bodyswapping with you to, uh, get back into your body again?”

Ford stared at his brother for a long moment as his brain ticked over that.

“...Thank you, Stanley,” he finally said quite calmly, folding his hands in front of him on the table. “I am fairly sure that you’ve just managed to give me an entirely new set of nightmares to enjoy, the next time I manage to fall asleep. Congratulations.”

Stan winced. “Aw, c’mon Ford,” he said. “It ain’t that bad. It’s not like I can’t tell you and the ex-triangle apart. Geez.”

...Aaaaaand now his brother had just made it worse. He was _definitely_ going to have nightmares over this now. “Please stop talking. _Again_.”

“Sorry.” And Stan _did_ look a bit sorry, at least.

It didn’t really help. Maybe more coffee would. He got up from the table and retrieved the entire coffee pot this time, as he told his brother... “This. This conversation right here, Stanley. _This_ is why I don’t like talking about Bill Cipher.” This was _exactly_ why he didn’t like talking about Bill with anyone else, and _especially not his brother_. This. Right here.

Because with Bill, insanity abounded, and discomfort was the norm. Always. _Always_. And Ford knew better now. He did. He _really_ did.

“Uh, what?” said Stan, sounding confused, as Ford sat back down. “What does thinking about what it’s like to be a girl have to do with the kid? --I mean, lotsa people think about that kind of thing without ever even _knowing_ about him, or any of that triangle stuff,” he added after Ford stared at him for a bit. “You can’t blame it all on him.”

“Lots of… people… think about what it’s like… to be a _girl?_ ” Ford said, feeling a bit sideswiped at the moment. “... _Human_ people?” Because that seemed like a clarification that might be necessary, given where they were all living at present, and who-with.

“Well, yeah,” said Stan, scratching at his cheek. “What, you’ve never thought about what it’d be like to be a girl before?”

“No!” Ford said, flabbergasted. “Why _would_ I?”

“Why ‘would’ you?” Stan sounded just as confused as he dropped his hand away from his face. “Why _wouldn’t_ you? --Isn’t that supposed to be, I don’t know, one of those brainy ‘thought experiment’-type things that all you poindexters and nerdy people like to get up to?”

“Well, if it is, then why did _you_ first think of it?” Ford brought up peevishly, before wishing that maybe he hadn’t.

Except Stan didn’t seem to take it that badly at all. Instead, he actually answered the question seriously with… “Because I was in a bar once and not as drunk as I wanted to be, but I was outta cash, and I saw how easy a time some of the ladies were having getting guys to order them drinks.” And Stan told it to him so matter-of-factly, it just left Ford staring. “And I thought, ‘hey, if I was a girl, I bet I could get drinks that easy, too!’ ‘Cause it’s really hard to get a guy to buy you a drink when you’re a guy, you know?” No, no Ford _didn’t_ know. How did Stan? “But if you’re a _girl_ , you just have to smile and bat your eyes and flirt a little, right?” ‘ _...What?_ ’ “...Except then I thought about how most guys would expect me to put out after I did that, if I was a girl, and then… uh… I may have gotten in a barfight with somebody after that ‘cause I got mad about it,” Stan said, more than a little sheepishly. “‘Cause why do girls have to put up with all that junk, anyway? Y’know? ...Or, uh, maybe not. Memory’s kinda hazy.”

Ford stared at his brother for awhile, and then a little while longer.

“You’ve really never thought about it before?” Stan asked him, looking at him somewhat curiously.

Ford did not answer his brother directly.

Instead, Ford decided to turn away from his brother, pick up the coffee pot, and drink down half of the remaining contents all in one go.

Ford set the coffee pot back down on the table.

“Let’s talk about something else,” Ford said firmly, eyes forward.

“Uh, okay,” said Stan, sounding slightly weirded out at him. ...Well, that was hardly _his_ fault. _He_ wasn’t the one of the two of them bringing up changes in biological gender and so-called ‘brainy thought experiments’ that were _absolutely insane_ to even so much as contemplate. Just… _why?_ \--Just why???

Ford rubbed circles at his temples for a bit, as he took a moment to try and reorder his thoughts.

Then Ford said, “Stanley, what are you providing Bill _beyond_ food, clothing, shelter, ‘schooling’, and… some form of limited safety for any fights he gets into that he himself does not instigate?” Ford asked of him, because that couldn’t be all there was to it. “What aren’t you telling me?” And, while he was on the subject… “And what does _any_ of this have to do with Bill being ‘in too deep’ with you? Or…” Ford swallowed hard. “Or with you... ‘twisting Bill up inside’ so badly that he will never tell you ‘no’?”

And maybe it was bad of him, but the thought of that still made Ford feel a little ill. This was Bill Cipher that they were talking about, but… this was _Bill Cipher_ they were talking about.

Because the idea of Bill Cipher being bound and restricted had seemed almost laughable before when they’d been out on the porch, yesterday afternoon. Just… _ludicrous_. Because Bill Cipher was a trillion-year-old dream demon. To try and _control_ him was madness itself!

...But now? The idea of Bill Cipher _bound_ to… someone, anyone, let alone his _brother_ , was…

Sickening. It was sickening. And frightening. _Horrifying_ even. Ford had only ever wanted to kill him. To stop him. To make Bill stop. Oftentimes, he’d wished he could hurt Bill in the same way that he’d been hurt, in return, to _make him know what it felt like_ , to make Bill **regret** _ever_ having--!

But Ford had never even so much as _contemplated_ trying to… _control_ Bill. To... to bring him to _heel_.

And what would that even look like, to ‘twist’ a being of pure energy -- one that might as well be a literal force of natural chaos -- up around himself, inside his own mind? What would that even take, to do to a true Master of the Mind such as Bill was?

With the way Stan had suddenly shifted to talking about doing _that very thing_ , relating the knowledge of his intent so coldly to them all that morning, though…

For the first time, Stanford had been forced to truly consider the idea of _what that might mean_. He’d actually stopped to consider what that would be like. What might happen if Stanley Pines, his own brother, had _Bill Cipher_ ‘on his side’ and _at his disposal_ , to have the demon’s abilities and resources and mind available to him, for Stanley to use, at a _whim_. What might happen if Bill Cipher could never, _would_ never, _ever_ tell his brother ‘no’.

And Ford had felt a little fear at the thought of Bill Cipher being under his brother’s control.

...That fear that he’d felt before? Came back with a vengeance as Stan stared at him now, as he gave Ford the very same stare that he’d given him earlier this morning, when Ford had said he didn’t understand him _then_.

“--Stanley, I understand that you seem to think that ‘giving Bill things’ in some way gives you some measure of control over him, but I assure you that that is _not_ the case,” Ford told him hurriedly, feeling more than a little sick again already. But at least _that_ particular apocalyptic scenario was **not** one that could _ever_ take place in this reality, not _least_ of which because... “Food, clothing, and shelter are all things that Bill can most certainly easily obtain for himself, even as he is right now.” With the vast amounts of knowledge in Bill’s memory still available to him for his use, it would be pitifully easy, in fact. “And he certainly does _not_ need any ‘schooling’.” Ford shook his head. “I don’t know why you think so, and I don’t know what game he is playing with you--”

“Go Fish,” Stan said.

“--but he… _What?_ ” Ford said, stopping to blink owlishly at his brother.

“Go Fish,” Stan repeated. “He’s playing Go Fish with me.”

Ford stared at his brother for a long moment.

“Stanley,” he said slowly. “Bill plays _chess_.”

“Eh, maybe he plays chess with _you_ , because you like playing chess,” his brother told him with a shrug. “But he’s been playing Go Fish with me.”

Ford stared at his brother, because that did _not_ make any sense. _At all._ “...You like to play poker.”

“I like gambling and playing card games; doesn’t have to be poker,” Stan told him. “And I ain’t bluffing him,” Stan added, staring at him dead-on.

Ford stared back at his brother for a moment.

Then he reached for the coffee pot again.

“Ford, _seriously?_ ” his brother said as he took another large gulp.

“...Stanley, there is not enough coffee in the _world_ for me to be having this conversation with you right now,” Ford informed his brother tersely, as he not quite slammed the last dregs of the nearly-empty coffee pot back down onto the table in front of him.

“Well, then I guess you’ve got a problem, there, Ford,” he was informed dryly. “Because I’ve only got one can of coffee grounds in the house, and it’s maybe _barely_ just about half-full.”

Ford let out a terse, strained laugh.

“You sure you don’t want me to just break out the whiskey, instead?” Stan asked him.

“No, Stan,” Ford said. “This is _not_ one of those conversations that can be resolved by _getting mindlessly drunk on too much alcohol_ ,” he all-but-sneered out angrily at his brother. Because, really, when had that _ever_ solved _anything_ **ever?!**

“Well, it doesn’t sound like the coffee’s doin’ you any favors here, either,” his brother told him with an odd sort of sympathetic frankness in his tone, and something about that…

...broke him, just a little.

Ford held his face in his hands, covering his face with his fingers. He didn’t want to have think think about this. He didn’t want to have to _deal_ with this. Everything was supposed to have been _over_. They had won. They were _supposed_ to have _won!!_

He’d had to deal with this for _thirty_ long _years_ now. **Thirty years.** So _why_ did he still have to--

“Ford…” he heard his brother say softly. He heard his brother’s chair slide closer, and... a hand came down on his shoulder.

Ford wasn’t able to stifle the hard flinch.

The touch of Stan’s hand vanished away from him, and Ford dropped his hands and looked to his brother immediately, an apology already on his lips, worried and a little afraid at what his brother must be thinking of him just then, for having flinched away from him like that.

Stanley… looked a little sad.

“Kid really got to you out on the porch, didn’t he?” Stan said quietly, and it was all Ford could do not to start physically shaking in place again. “Was wondering why Mabel kept getting so huggy with you after,” his brother said almost philosophically to him. “Guess now I know why.”

“I-- I can’t talk about it, Lee,” Ford told his brother, things starting to tumble about in his mind. All the things that he didn’t want to think about, from the other side of the portal. And all it had taken was one thought, one wrong word. The idea that _Stanley might **know** why_.

Ford was not ready for this. He had not prepared for this. The whole point of Bill not talking was supposed to make him not _have_ to _talk about this!_

“I just… I _can’t_ ,” Ford added desperately, shifting back away slightly in his chair as his brother moved in a little closer towards him. “I just _can’t!_ ”

“Okay,” said his twin. “Then don’t talk about it. You don’t have to.”

Stan made it sound like it was a perfectly reasonable request, despite everything that had happened, that Ford had done the day before. That he was okay with… And somehow, that made it **worse**. There were so many things inside Ford’s head right now, that _hurt_. That were _hurting_ him. That were just _screaming_ to get out. So many horrible things that he regretted, so many things that he needed to--

...But if he talked, he’d lose his family. He’d lose them. They’d hate him. He _knew_ they would. --He couldn’t risk losing them. Not now. Not _ever_. He just… _couldn’t_.

“I’m sorry,” Ford gasped out. “I just… _I’m sorry_.”

“Don’t be,” Stan said. “C’mere.” He held his arms out, almost gingerly. “Lousy substitute, I know, but Mabel’s almost definitely asleep by now, and we don’t need to be waking her up over this just to fill out a little prescription for you, yeah?” Stan told him with his usual gruff self-deprecating manner, when it came to ‘Power of Mabel’-prescribed hugs.

Ford managed to turn in place, reach over, and… hug his twin.

It got easier.

Until he started shaking. Then it got harder, but Stan just held him a little closer, a little more carefully, _just being there for him_ , and then the tears came.

Not that either of them would talk about it, or admit it. But… Lee just kept on holding him, and eventually Ford stopped shaking and he didn’t feel quite so terrible anymore. He felt a little like something had emptied out of him, instead, along with those tears.

Stanley was rubbing his back gently, hugging him and just _there_ , and Ford sighed out a little and finally, _finally_ began to relax a little in his twin’s hold.

Ford wasn’t sure how long they were sitting there like that, but by the time they finally pulled away from each other a bit, it felt like it had been a century and a half of comfort, and he was feeling dead-tired all over again.

He rubbed at his eyes a bit -- getting rid of the evidence, as it were.

“Any better?” his twin asked him.

Ford sighed. “Not really.” Because it really wasn’t; not really. Nothing was yet resolved.

“Eh,” said Stan, rubbing a hand over Ford’s shoulder and giving him a half-conspiratorial smile. “Worth a try.”

Ford let out a short laugh, he couldn’t help but to do so.

“I really thought I’d feel better by now,” he admitted to his twin, feeling more than a little guilty about it. Here he’d been, sleeping and eating almost regularly, and he almost felt the worse for it. And what really wasn’t helping was that… “I swear I have a caffeine headache that just doesn’t seem to want to give up and vanish into the ether like it should. Not entirely.” It wasn’t quite as bad as it had felt upon waking, but...

Stan pulled back slightly and frowned a little.

Then he glanced over at the coffee pot, reached out, and pulled it towards him.

“Stanley?” Ford asked, as his brother took a sniff at the remaining dregs of what had once been the contents of the pot, and his frown deepened.

“Hold on,” he heard his brother mutter abstractly, as he put the pot back down and got up from the table, to trek over to the coffee machine and pull out and open the cookie jar which he’d apparently used as the hiding place for said coffee earlier. It had worked well as a hiding place, too, because what demented mind would think to put cookies and coffee together? ...Besides his brother, that is. It also hadn’t helped that he’d known the cookie jar was full of cookies earlier; the can should _not_ have fit in there with the rest of the jar’s contents, so Ford hadn’t even bothered to look for it in there that morning during his search.

“What did you do with all the cookies that were in there, anyway?” Ford asked. Surely, the kids hadn’t eaten _all_ of them in a single afternoon.

“Ate some, bagged the rest; put ‘em in the back of the freezer,” Stan told him absently, and Ford sighed heavily, because that was _not_ where cookies were supposed to go. Freezing them wouldn’t exactly help the taste, either.

He watched Stan’s slightly hunched back as his brother reached in and pulled out the can. And then Stan snorted.

“What?” Ford asked, actually half-curious now.

Stanley turned towards him, and tossed the can up into the air slightly, adding a twist to its motion. When it came back down again, he caught it and held it out away from him slightly, tilted towards Ford, with the words on the front of it now visible in Ford’s direction.

It did not escape Ford’s notice that one of the words rather prominently displayed on the front of the can was “DECAF.”

“Kids pulled one over on me,” Stan said, sounding both amused and almost proud about it, as he turned the can back towards him, to stare down at it a bit more, with the smallest of smiles. “Well, they are thirteen now. It’s about time.”

“‘Decaf?’” It took Ford a moment. “We have _decaffeinated coffee_ in the house?” Ford said, feeling somewhat offended at the very notion, because who would _buy_ that? And why had anyone ever begun making it in the first place? Caffeine was the whole _point_ of the stuff.

“Kids must’ve bought it this afternoon,” Stan said. “Huh. Not sure how they snuck it back, but they must’ve messed with it all in the kitchen while they were making their hot chocolate and stuff after dinner, while I was out in the living room with Bill and not looking.” He let out a small ‘joke’s on me’ laugh. “Should’ve known the little scamps gave up too easily on that.”

“...Gave up too easily on _what?_ ” Ford asked with a feeling of not-quite dread.

“Eh? Oh.” Stan looked over at him again, after setting down the can on the counter. “We got to talking this afternoon, about making sure you can sleep okay -- what might work better for you, be the safest for everyone, and all that. I thought you might sleep better if we took shifts -- you sleep during the afternoon into the evening, then wake up for dinner, and stay up awake while Bill and the rest of us are supposed to be sleeping. So, y’know, you’ll be up to know if Bill wakes up and tries anything. We'd all have breakfast together, and me and the kids could take watch for you during the day, just like today, so you know you can sleep easy.” Stan shrugged at him. “The kids thought that was a bad idea.”

Ford blinked at him. “What?” Ford said, mystified. It sounded like a working solution to him... at least, it certainly wouldn’t be any _worse_ than what he’d been doing (or rather, _not_ doing) up until that point. He hadn’t exactly been upstairs and policing Bill during his waking hours before; he’d thought Stan had been keeping him confined or otherwise jailed somehow, which clearly hadn’t been the case. Knowing better now… well, Ford doubted that he _could_ police Bill effectively all by himself while in close proximity to him, if everything that had happened yesterday was any indication. Not without it turning into a physical confrontation in short order.

But if he slept during the day and was awake at night, and _not_ in the same room as Bill… If he was asleep in his bedroom upstairs here, at least it would potentially be less time for him to get up, out, and into the rest of the main house when something happened that _required_ a physical confrontation with Bill. His response time would certainly be faster than if he heard someone scream and was down in the basement labs -- which were a long, slow elevator ride away. Down there, he might not even hear anything at all to begin with. Even with the additional hidden monitoring devices he’d installed around the interior of the Shack late the previous afternoon with the niblings’ help, he wouldn’t hear anything if he didn’t stay glued to the monitors while he was down there -- certainly not if he found himself deep in the middle of concentrating intensely on a project he was working on, as he was wont to do, for better or for worse.

“Why?” Ford amended. “Did they give any reason why they thought that would be a bad idea?” Ford asked of his brother, adjusting his glasses a little self-consciously.

Stan grimaced slightly, and scratched at his cheek. “Well,” he sighed. “It sounded like they thought you staying up late at night with no-one to talk to, with nothing to think about but Bill and Weirdmageddon and portal stuff until morning, might not be the greatest idea.”

Ford had to stifle a wince. “...I can take care of myself.” He’d had to deal with such for several decades on his own, alone, before. He could do it again if he had to. (...Couldn’t he?)

“Yeah, I know,” Stan said. “But the kids worry, you know?”

Ford looked away and nodded, not quite grimacing. They’d encountered the phenomenon several times before when they’d been out sailing, and been having one or another of their video chats with the niblings. It entailed everything from the care packages that somehow made their way to them across entire seas and oceans, full of soup and funny little animal-shaped smelly soaps and mystery novels and glitter when they weren’t feeling all that well from having just weathered a particularly-choppy week-long wavefront of storms, to hastily-prescribed _‘It’s the Power of Mabel, Grunkle Ford! --Grunkle Stan, you gotta hug him for me! HUG! HUG! HUG!’_ s at the accidental (...and sometimes not-so-accidental...) drop of a mention of anything less-physical that might potentially be a thing that was wrong with them then, and Dipper’s well-meaning (partially-conspiratorial, if not outright in-conspiracy) warnings of, _'You’d better do it, she won’t stop or hang up until you do.’_ to round out Mabel’s good-natured demands of ‘ _hug-hug-hugging-right-now!_ ’

It gave Ford an odd feeling, to know that the niblings’ care extended to them well beyond the confines of their ship. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known it, but… he hadn't really _seen_ it before. There hadn’t been the same sort of evidence of it to be able to point at and say… ‘yes, they still love me and care about me, even if I’m not an entire ocean away’. That it wasn’t just the distance and the danger of their daring nautical mission that had been worrying them. Hugs with him in the basement when they also weren’t feeling all that well themselves were one thing, but this? Switching the coffee out on them? This must have required outright planning. --Devious pre-planning, overall sneakiness, and forethought aplenty in fact, in order to have pulled one over on Stanley himself.

“Should’ve known better when I saw them give each other that ‘twin-telepathy’ look of theirs and stop talking about it.”

“You didn’t get suspicious when they left the Shack to go shopping?”

“Nah,” said Stan.

“Why not?” Ford asked, perplexed in the extreme.

Stan snorted. “Because I was the one who sent ‘em to the store in the first place,” Stan told him, giving the offending not-really-proper-coffee can a thoughtful look, where it sat so unobtrusively on the counter. “I really need to get to the store, Ford. We’re runnin’ low on a lot of stuff. But I couldn’t leave the house myself today without breaking my promise to you at least two different ways. Would’ve meant going by myself, leaving the house _and_ the kid behind; still haven’t gotten the kid to agree to go into town with me.” He sighed.

“You do _not_ want Bill going into town,” Ford said severely.

Stan turned his head and gave him a long look. “You mean _you_ don’t want the kid going into town. _I_ **absolutely** want the kid going into town with me.”

“There will be riots,” Ford pressed, feeling the strain already. He’d seen what mobs could do when the group mentality collectively decided they were angry enough to storm a place or a group of people for violence-sought. He did _not_ want to have to shoot half the people in town in order to keep them from tearing his family to literal shreds.

“Why?” Stan said. “Because the kid’s such a scary, scary triangle?”

“ _Yes!!_ ” Ford said angrily, and Stan was smiling at him. Why was Stan smiling at him?!

“Ford,” Stan said patiently, folding his arms and turning to lean up against the countertop. “Who’s gonna _tell_ them he’s a ‘scary, scary triangle’? _You?_ ”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Stanley,” Ford said, with no small amount of frustration. “I won’t have to tell them. It’s--”

“--obvious that he’s… _him?_ A great big ol’ weird floaty cackling one-eyed triangle?” Stan said, and his smile got a little bit wider.

Ford opened his mouth to correct Stanley -- because Bill had two eyes now, not one -- and then he stopped.

“With a top hat and cane, decked out all in yellow?” Stan said, adding insult to injury, as he prodded him with what had apparently been obvious to everybody else _but_ him.

Ford stared at his brother, and then slammed his hanging jaw shut.

Stan’s smile got a little more broad, and his eyes, tired as he looked, got a little bit of a sparkle to them.

‘ _Oh, by Tesla’s genius unrealized..._ ’ Ford thought faintly, with a encroaching feeling of horror.

“You know that even _Dipper_ had trouble figuring out that Mabel’s new boyfriend ‘Norman’ was just a stack of gnomes standing on top of each other at the beginning of last summer, _right?_ ” Stan told him good-naturedly. “And those two were all over town together for their ‘date’. Nobody noticed a thing,” and Stan’s smile was starting to morph into a grin.

“We… we can’t just… _not_ tell them…!” Ford said plaintively, his head spinning. “It… it would be ethically _irresponsible_ of us not to warn the townspeople, if he…” But his own voice sounded weak and wavering, unconvincing even to his own ears.

“Really?” Stan said, looking perfectly relaxed as he leaned up against the countertop at his side. “And here _I_ was thinking that it’d be ‘irresponsible’ to go scaring half the town about a big Weirdpocalypse-causing demon-triangle, when all we’ve got on our hands to point at is a gangly seventeen-year-old goth-looking kid.”

...The worst part was, Stan was using a solid half of Ford’s own argument -- the one he’d used to convince the rest of the Zodiac to not talk about Bill -- against him, here.

The other half of the argument Ford had used at the time had been that Stan would be taking care of things.

...Except the problem was that Stan wasn’t. This was _not_ ‘taking care of things’.

\-- _Not in any way that was good for the rest of them_ , and _that_ was the thought that let Ford get his mental feet back under him again.

Stan grin got a bit of a quirk to it. “Would be kinda like yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater when there’s not even any smoke, right?”

Ford gritted his teeth. “Except there _is_ a fire, Stanley.” And Bill was the fire.

“Eh, kid hasn’t set fire to anything burnable _today_. --Okay, okay, bad example,” Stan said as Ford’s shoulders came up. Stan waved it off, not deterred in the least. “Like crying ‘wolf!’ and pointing to something that looks exactly like a sheep, then.” Stan paused, and then he looked Ford right in the eye and said, “Nobody will believe you.”

Ford’s shoulders fell and he felt sick to his stomach, as he looked back at his brother.

There was a long silence.

It took Ford nearly a minute of staring at his brother in that quiet, to realize that his brother was truly being serious. That he really believed what he was saying.

“...This is wrong,” Ford said quietly.

“Says who?” Stan told him.

Ford pulled in a bracing breath.

“Me,” said Ford, raising his chin. “ _I_ say it’s wrong.”

“Why?” said Stan.

_Why?_ Did Stan even have to ask? “Because he could _hurt_ someone, causing them **grievous** bodily harm--” Ford gritted his teeth and shook his head. “ _When_ ” -- not if -- “Bill kills someone, it will be on _us_ for not having warned anyone of the potential _dangers_ of--”

“--walking up to the kid and saying ‘hi’ to him right in the middle of the grocery store?” Stan put out there. “Ford, you really aren’t getting this, are you. I’m teaching the kid how to _not start fights_. I’ve already got him _agreeing_ with me not to be the one to _pick_ that fight _first_. Telling the people in town that he’s the triangle? Will have most of them _trying_ to pick a fight with the kid. _Not_ telling them that? Means _no fights_.”

“Even if that was somehow true,” and Ford doubted that with every fiber of his being, “We cannot simply bring him into the center of town and _not tell anyone_ ,” Ford insisted.

“Hey, the rest of your little circle knows, don’t they?” Stan put out there, as if it were some sort of compromise. “Who else really needs to?” Stan added rhetorically, then sighed. “--Ford, let's be real here, okay?” Stan said, as he straightened up away from the counter and pulled open the fridge. “If you go trying to tell people in town that Bill Cipher is back, you’re gonna get yourself zapped by the cops before you get halfway through your first sentence,” Stan told him, as he pulled out a couple more sodas, and put one solidly down on the table in front of Ford. “Even if you manage to tell a few other people somehow,” Stan said as he took up one of the others and popped the tab on the can, “And even if you get them to believe you? All that’s gonna happen is that _they’re_ gonna be the ones to run afoul of that ‘Never Mind All That’ Act that they passed at the end of last summer. --And even if you manage to get around _all that_ ,” Stan told him, waving his can around, “ _I’ll_ just tell all of ‘em that I’ve got an anchor-thing on my shoulder that lets me keep Bill from doing anything really stupid, and that their ‘town hero’s got this one. That they don’t have to worry.”

Ford shivered as he watched Stan take a drink from his soda, as if the thought of lying about that didn’t bother Stan in the least. Ford did _not_ like the idea that things might come down to a ‘who do you believe, him or me?’ situation with his brother at all -- and Stanley had brought it up _twice_ now.

He also didn’t like the feeling of uncertainty that, if he went to the other Zodiac members now -- even Dipper and Mabel -- and tried to convince them of… the exact opposite of what he’d tried so hard to convince them of before -- telling them that they _needed_ to inform the town of Bill Cipher’s return -- that they might not listen to him this time. That they might side with Stanley, instead.

...and Bill. They might be siding with Stanley _and Bill_.

“You’re prioritizing Bill’s safety over the entire town,” Ford said shakily, trying to get Stanley to _see it_ , to _see_ what he was doing.

“So?” Stan said, tilting his head at him.

“‘So’?!” Ford echoed, in shock. “What do you mean, ‘ _so_ ’??”

“I mean, so what? The town ain’t my responsibility,” Stan elaborated on to him. “All I really care about is my family. The kids. ‘The town’ can take care of itself if it has to. As long as nobody’s trying to cause problems up here, or with any of us, I really don’t care _what_ they do.”

\---


	5. Chapter 5

\---

_‘The town ain’t my responsibility. All I really care about is my family. The kids. ‘The town’ can take care of itself if it has to. As long as nobody’s trying to cause problems up here, or with any of us, I really don’t care _what_ they do.’_

Ford felt a shiver go down his spine. And yes, he’d known that his brother had a very strict and limited set of priorities when it came to what passed for his own moral code, but _this_ was… this...

Ford shook his head. “But don’t you see?” Ford told him desperately. “By deciding _not_ to tell anyone in town, but still planning on bringing Bill into town, you’re going to cause an even _worse_ riot once people find out! And instead of focusing solely on Bill as the rightful outlet for their anger and concern, they’ll be angry with _all_ of us, instead. --You’re prioritizing Bill’s safety over the kids!”

“Hey, I’ve dealt with mobs in my driveway before. Mobs of the undead, even.” Stanley said. “If they really want to start a fight, then I’ll end it.”

Ford felt another spike of anger as he stared up at his brother.

“ _Start_ a fight?” Ford said almost to himself, outraged. “The townsfolk won’t be the ones _starting_ any fight. _Bill_ started that fight when he--!!”

“--You mean the _triangle_ picked a fight with them,” Stan said as if correcting him. “Nine months ago.”

Ford stopped short.

Then he pulled in a quick startled breath and his eyes went wide as he realized--

No. No no. No no no no--

Ford physically pushed himself back from the table. His hands clenched spasmodically over the edge of it. Because no. No. _No_ He had to be wrong about this. He _had_ to be-- Stan _wouldn’t_ \--

He _couldn’t_ \--

Stan would never--

“-- _Define ‘ **first** ’_,” Ford said, and his voice was shaking as he said it.

“Huh?” said Stan.

“Y-you said... that you’d ‘ _back him up_ ’ if anyone tried to pick a fight with him. If--” Ford felt short of breath. “If he didn’t _start the fight **first**_.” Ford could feel himself shaking again in place. “What do you _mean_ by _**first**_!!”

Stan blinked at him. “Right. Guess maybe that feels like triangle-speak to ya?”

“ _Stanley!_ ”

Stan sighed heavily.

“‘ _ **Not** hurt and murder people who aren’t trying to kill or hurt him first **right then**_ ’, Ford,” Stanley said, and Ford realized with a jolt that Stan was repeating-- “Somebody _stops_ trying to kill him, _he_ stops trying to kill them _right away_. They start up again? He starts again, and I’m at his back and backing him up, as long as he didn’t bait them into it,” and at that, Ford felt truly sick, because how would Stan know if... “--He picks a fight? He’s gonna have to worry about explaining it all to **me** afterwards, and he remembers _exactly_ how badly the last two fights he’s had with _me_ went.”

“Last… _two_ fights?” Ford said, voice weak with worry, because what had he missed--?!

“Memory gun and one good punch, magic circles out in the Shack’s backyard,” Stan sounded off succinctly, and Ford pulled in a breath. “I win; he doesn’t. --I don’t want him picking fights, and he _knows_ it,” his brother told him. “And he knows that _nothing_ he can say will change my mind, because he knows there’s no way I’m gonna be okay with him picking a fight without backup, when he could’ve come to me first, instead. I straight up _told_ him that -- and I mean it, too.” Stan took another swig of his soda, set it back down.

“You… _can’t_...” Ford choked out, completely caught off-guard by this. Because he _never_ would have expected--

“And he knows _why_ that’s a bad idea, because I told him that, too,” Stanley steamrolled along. “If he can’t explain to me why he thinks he needs to fight somebody on something, and can’t convince me that it needs doing _before_ the fight starts, then it ain’t worth it, I _won’t_ be the one starting that fight myself, and Bill knows it,” and the last left Ford choking in disbelief again. “Look, Ford, I told him not to start fights, and that he’s on his own if he starts it himself. If one needs starting, then I’ll be the one to start it -- and then he’s in the clear, gettin’ defended. --I ain’t bein’ arbitrary with the kid on this junk. If somebody’s gonna try and attack anybody who’s part of the agreement -- the kids or Soos or Wendy or even the kid -- then that’s a fight _I’m_ gonna take on, myself.” Stan shrugged. “And if the kid tells me that he thinks there’s a fight’s coming that he doesn’t think he can get out of on his own? I’m takin’ point on it.”

Ford, irritated at Stan’s insistence on this madness, told his brother, “You can’t possibly expect Bill to believe that you’d do that for him!” Such a blatant lie was just stupid in the extreme, and his brother could hardly pull it off even if he did mean it -- which Ford doubted in the extreme -- because he couldn’t possibly _do_ it, even if he wanted to. Not least of which was because-- “Nothing and no-one is stopping _anyone_ Bill has _ever_ angered from coming here and taking their revenge upon him,” while killing anyone else who might get in their way, or even just accidentally happen to be in the same vicinity as Bill at the same time, in the process. “And they _won’t_ consider _themselves_ to be the ones ‘starting it first’. So unless you want to take on the _entire multiverse_ \--” and bring the niblings into the crossfire in the process--

“Ford, right now the only people who know Bill is alive again are you, me, the kids, the rest of your little circle, and those damn cultists,” Stan informed him over his can of soda. “Nobody’s got any reason to be coming here looking for 'Bill Cipher', yeah? That ain’t an issue, and it ain’t _gonna_ be as long as I have anything to say about it,” Stan said with an odd, tired and dogged insistence.

Ford stared at Stan as his brother took another swig of his soda.

“ _Even if_ no-one from outside this dimension comes for him,” Ford began, and _that_ was a pretty big ‘if’, “You cannot expect me, or him, to believe that you are planning on fighting others here on Bill’s behalf, if they mean to attack him!”

“Eh.” Stan sat back in his chair and took another sip of soda. “If the kid doesn’t start a fight, but somebody else tries to, I’ll make whoever it is stop. Pretty sure I can talk most people out of it without anybody getting killed, like what would happen if I just let the kid go at whatever without any backup of help. Not like I want to be dealing with burying a bunch of dead bodies every other afternoon, and the kid knows that, too. Hell, I'd make him grab the shovel and do all the digging by hand -- see if he thinks it’s worth it _then_ ,” Stan told him philosophically, taking another drink from his can.

Ford almost sprang on the obvious in Stan had left him, to drive the wedge in hard and deep: _Bill wasn’t a kid_.

He didn’t, though, because his mind and his memory caught up to him just in the nick of time, for him to remember what Stan had told them all last night: that Stan thought Bill _had been_ a triangle, that Stan thought Bill was _a kid_ right now.

“The kid ain’t holding us killing him against us right now, Ford. Says most people aren’t stupid enough to go carrying grudges across deaths like that, or they’ll be fighting like idiots forever until everybody’s had a turn at dying. --You _really_ want to try and open up _that_ can of worms up with him, for no good reason?” Stan said, all but glaring at him over his soda can.

And with that, Ford realized that his brother apparently thought that Bill’s death was a dividing line that none of them should dare cross, or they’d be crossing _him_.

The blank, numbing thought that came to him next was that… Stan didn’t care. --Of course Stan didn’t care about ‘saving the world’, or all the trillions upon trillions that Bill had hurt, killed, enslaved and worse, in other dimensions that he’d never even heard of. Stanley didn’t care about things like that; he never had, and likely never would.

But the idea that Stan didn’t care at all about what Bill had done to _him_...

...Why didn’t Stan care?

“Drink your soda, Ford. It’s got caffeine. Should help with the headache,” his brother told him, like the rest of it was no big deal.

...and then Ford realized: how _could_ Stan care, and why would Stan _never?_ Stan didn’t know.

_Stan didn’t know._

Stan didn’t know, because _he_ hadn’t _told_ him.

Ford hadn’t told him.

Hadn’t warned him.

Not at all. Not even a little.

Ford’s vision swam with frustrated, unshed tears. Because he’d been talking about warning the townsfolk about Bill as being so important that it was utterly _essential_ , but he hadn’t even done his own _brother_ the courtesy of--

\--There were snippets of information here-and-there, of course, things that had escaped him in moments of anger and weakness. Out on the porch yesterday, he’d screamed at Bill about how he’d lied to him, betrayed him, and nearly drove him to the brink of insanity with the portal. ...Stan had _seen_ him that final day, but all Ford had really managed to do was get into a fight with him. He hadn’t been able to truly communicate to Stan what he’d been up against, because… he hadn’t wanted to. He’d kept it to himself and only given Stan empty but desperate platitudes, to which Stanley had responded with anger and specific examples of issues of his own -- issues that had paled in comparison to Ford’s own, of course, but how would Stan know? Simply because _Ford_ had said so to start?

And he’d yelled at Bill about playing cat-and-mouse games with him and having outright tortured him during Weirdmageddon, but he’d never talked about that before, with _any_ of his family. He’d bandaged his physical wounds in private, never talked about the mental ones which he himself ignored. They’d _all_ been far more concerned with Stanley’s recovery at the time -- and rightfully so, in Ford’s opinion. But what that had meant for _him_ was that for all his family had known up until yesterday, he’d been a golden statue for the majority of the time that Weirdmageddon had been taking place, up until they’d stormed the Fearamid in order to rescue him.

...Worse, after all his yelling and tossed-out accusations yesterday, Ford had followed it all up with a challenge to Bill to try and explain to him what would make all that okay. Why they should still be friends after all that. In his mounting anger yesterday, he’d undercut his own message. Stan, being far more literal than he, might well and truly have seen it as an actual opening to try and make things right, that Ford had been granting an opportunity for Bill to try and actually _explain_ , when he had really been doing no such thing.

He’d told Bill that he’d ruined his life, and Stan would not have understood the vast gulf of difference between what _Bill_ had done to him, and what Stanley himself had done so many years ago. Because Stanley had nothing and no information to tell him otherwise. All he had to work with was a brother who would break into uncontrollable shivers at times, and refuse to talk about _anything_ with him... when he wasn’t spending the rest of his time telling him outright that he was perfectly fine.

So how? How could Stan know? Stan had _no real context_ for _any_ of it.

The answer was: Stan couldn’t. He didn’t. He hadn’t asked.

He hadn’t asked, and Ford hadn’t told him.

Ford had barely touched upon anything that had happened on the other side of the portal, in all of those other dimensions, at any point. He’d shared a few, a very few, select things with the niblings on a handful of occasions, but he’d strictly limited himself to the whimsical. The good times. Those very, very few, truly good times. As for the rest...

Stanley had tried to comfort him then, yesterday, out on the porch, when maybe he’d begun to understand that everything hadn’t been all gambling and ‘alien babes’ all the time for his nerdy gun-toting brother -- and Ford had outright _shrugged him off_. As though he hadn’t wanted or needed it, when what he’d really needed in the moment was not to _dwell_ on that part of it. To keep going. To continue trying not to look back. But Stan wasn’t a mindreader. He wouldn’t know.

Stan had been chased by the criminal element in this dimension before, but he had no idea what bounty hunters in other dimensions were like, or what had almost certainly been awaiting Ford upon capture once he had been returned to Bill. ... _Eventually_. After those bounty hunters finally decided that they were done with him, if ever they had caught up with him.

Stan hadn’t even known that Bill had used to take over his body. Not until Ford had told him that tonight -- and barely managed to share the basic facts, at that. Stan didn’t really understand what that had meant _here_ , when he’d been trying to take apart the portal, and all the sleepless nights that had caused, the delirium of trying to operate at all hours on next-to-no sleep. And if Stan didn’t even understand that… He couldn’t _possibly_ understand what that had actually meant while Ford had first been on the run, those many many years when he’d been desperately jumping from dimension to dimension in the multiverse without rhyme or reason, before he’d finally been offered a boon by a saintly, life-saving Oracle and gotten that metal plate put into his head.

Stan had had Bill inside of his head, but it hadn’t taken him more than a minute to stand up and punch the triangle demon straight into oblivion. ...And from his own recounting of the experience, Stan had spent most of that time keeping his mind clear and waiting for Ford to actually pull the damn trigger. He’d had no problems dealing with Bill, not really. Just a quick scare in the Fearamid, before tricking Bill into stopping what he was doing and letting the kids go.

...And that was _exactly_ the problem, wasn’t it. Stan’s experiences with Bill up until that point had been just that. _Just that_. Just that one short time in the Fearamid with Bill. _He’d had no problems dealing with Bill himself._ And when Bill had threatened the kids, Stan had simply tricked Bill into stopping what he was doing, _not killing the kids_ , and letting them go.

 _Of course_ Stan thought he could handle Bill by continuing to do the same things as before. That had been Stan’s only real experience with the triangle demon. Stan really had _no idea_ who or what he was dealing with.

“Seriously, Ford, _drink the soda_. There is no way that those two left the caffeinated stuff down here for me to find. Five’ll get you twenty that they’ve got it squirreled upstairs away in their room somewhere with them, where they know we won’t go right now ‘cause that’d mean waking them back up."

Ford pulled in a long and shaky breath, and rubbed his hands over his face.

He didn’t argue with his brother. He just reached out, grabbed the can up, popped the tab, and drank half of it down at once, despite the sick feeling in his gut that made him not have to wonder if he’d be throwing it all up again later.

“...That bad, huh,” his brother said after he’d put the can back down.

Ford put his elbows on the table, leaned forward, and rubbed at his eyes under his glasses.

“If you are referring to the caffeine headache…” Ford said slowly, before dropping his hands and looking up at his brother blearily. “...Then yes. _That, too._ ”

“Well, I’ve got another couple cans of soda in the fridge,” his brother offered him. “After that, you’ll be stuck with the lukewarm stuff, though.”

It was too much. His brother ignoring Bill as a problem. Watching him trying to act like… to act like...

“--How can you act like everything is _normal??_ ” Ford blurted out angrily, slamming a hand down onto the table. Everything was wrong, nothing was okay -- and maybe Stanley couldn’t possibly know the _extent_ of it all, but his brother wasn’t oblivious. Ford had been shaking in his arms not more than a few minutes ago. He’d nearly _shot_ him the night before. So how could Stanley just--!!

Stanley looked at him evenly over his soda, then looked down at it and began to play with the can a little, swirling the contents around.

“Been living on top of an interdimensional portal for thirty years, Ford, and I--” Stan said, then shook his head, stopping himself. A long moment later, he began again. “The town’s _weird._ ” he said. “Town’s weird,” he reiterated, “And I’ve been living here for years.” He looked up at Ford. “I’ve got a pair of kids upstairs who tell me I’m their hero on the regular and actually _mean_ it,” Stan said, shaking his head. “I’ve got a twin brother who looks ten years younger than me ‘cause he spent too long in some kinda roll-back place in another universe entirely…” Stan let out a huff of breath. “And hey, now I’ve got a kid who thinks he’s a triangle sleeping in my bedroom, too, on the daily. **So what.** ” His brother gave him a dead-on stare. “You got something you think is even weirder than that, that I won’t understand _now?_ **Try me, Ford,** ” he bit out, eyes tired and demeanor cold.

Ford pulled in a breath, about to give him a hard comeback… then managed to stifle the urge. ( _Barely._ )

Stan looked down, raised his can again, and took another sip of his soda.

“He’s going to destroy you,” Ford said quietly.

“Been there, done that. Mabel fixed it with her scrapbooks and broke the memory gun over it,” Stan told him flippantly, pointing a finger at him with the hand holding the can. “What else you got.”

Ford frowned.

“It’s not a joke, Stanley. It’s what Bill does,” Ford told him, slow and steady. He took in another deep breath. “He’s going to listen to you. Talk with you. He’ll make you feel special.”

“Heh,” said Stan. “Don’t know about feeling ‘special’,” he made air quotes. “But listening and talking? Yeah. ‘Course he is. That’s what thinkers _do_ , Ford.”

‘Thinkers’, right. “He won’t _just_ talk and listen, Stanley. He’ll give you his undivided attention...” ‘ _and make you feel worthy of receiving it._ ’ Ford shivered and looked away.

“So?” Stan said. “What’s wrong with a little attention?”

“Stan, do you have _any_ idea what it feels like to have someone so much smarter than you pay _that_ much attention to you?” Ford asked him, with a grimace.

“What, like a test every second? Waitin’ for me to trip up?” Stan said, giving him a frowning look.

Ford took in a breath and let it out again. “Yes. And no. This would be more like…” He struggled to think of something his brother would understand; Stan had never been very academically inclined. “Someone who thinks of you as intelligent, despite clearly being much more intelligent than you,” Ford looked down at his hands, “So much so that you might wonder why they are even wasting their time talking with you in the first place. Yet they think that you are worth their time, to talk and listen to you, and they clearly do value your thoughts and opinions. And they make you feel smart, too. So you don’t want to ever let them down. Have… have you ever felt that way?” Ford asked him, looking up at his brother again. “Has anyone ever done--?”

“Yeah,” said Stan.

“--that… Yes?” Ford said, blinking, because he’d been ready with an ‘or have you seen someone who has done that for someone else...’ on the tip of his tongue. And now he was curious. Someone had shown that kind of interest in _Stanley_ at some point? “Who?”

“You,” Stan said simply, while looking down at his soda can, which he was swirling around in front of him again.

Ford went very, very still.

“What else,” Stan prompted him neutrally, before taking another sip.

Ford swallowed, hard.

He took a slow, deep breath.

“He… he takes that feeling, and he’ll use that. He’ll draw you in with it,” Ford told his brother. “He makes you feel good, about yourself. And he-- it’s _not_ funny, Stanley,” Ford said when his brother snorted at him.

“Right,” his brother said. “Triangle’s gonna make me feel good about myself. Uh huh.” He raised his can and drained the last of the soda out of it.

Ford waited until he was done. “Are you telling me that the idea of pulling one over on him _doesn’t_ make you feel very good? As if you’ve accomplished something both grand and essential?”

His brother visibly hesitated. “...I wouldn’t call it pulling one over on him,” he was told.

“Then what would you call it,” Ford said, watching him.

“...Working with him,” Stan told him, and Ford had to fight down a shudder. “Negotiating. Figuring things out.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Ford told him succinctly, biting off the word, and wasn’t that _just wonderful_ , to know that Bill really was trying to pull on his own brother _exactly_ what he’d pulled on Ford himself. Because Stanley had just stolen his next few words from him wholecloth, if only he replaced ‘negotiating’ with ‘brainstorming’.

Ford leaned forward a bit to look him right in the eye. “And how does that make you _feel_ , Stan?” Ford asked him quietly.

Stan frowned slightly and shifted in place, glancing away. He actually looked a bit thoughtful.

“He makes you feel like you can do more, _be_ more,” Ford told him. “It’s an addictive feeling. You’ll _want_ to ‘work with him’ more. Want to spend more time with him. Want to do more, for him.” ...Axolotl help them all. Ford didn’t know what Stan could _possibly_ be ‘working with’ Bill _on_ , but he doubted it was anything good.

Stan was frowning at him, again. Ford pulled in another breath before continuing. “And before you know it, he’ll be the driving force in your life, in everything that you do. He’ll be the one directing what you’re doing--”

“Pretty quick shift there, Ford,” Stan said, sounding a little cautious almost.

“It is,” Ford agreed, with a grimace. “You likely won’t even realize it at first; you’ll just turn around one day, and that’s the way things are. And once you do, the thought will occur to you that maybe that’s the way that it should be. That maybe that’s how things should have been all along, right from the start. Because Bill is… _Bill_. And so much more than you are, or ever will be.” ‘ _My muse…_ ’ Ford thought, then shivered and closed his eyes for a moment, wrapping his arms around himself, and… he kept his eyes closed as he told his brother that... “It will feel _good_ , that you are getting along so well. He will _make_ it feel good. He will _make_ you feel _good_.”

“Ford…” Stan said slowly, and there was something in his brother’s tone that he didn’t particularly want to try and decipher.

“He’ll make you feel like he’ll be there whenever you need him, and you’ll think that he means everything that he tells you,” Ford told his brother, and he felt himself on the verge of beginning to shake. “You’ll think that he likes you, and he will make you think that you can trust him with just about anything, no matter what. And then…”

Ford trailed off.

“...Then?” his brother said quietly.

Ford tightened his hands around himself, squeezing. “And then _he will turn on you_ ,” Ford gritted out. “He’ll turn _everything_ around on you, and suddenly nothing is right anymore and everything is wrong. _Everything you know will be wrong._ ” Ford ducked his head and kept his eyes closed; if he didn’t, and he saw the look his brother had on his face, he was sure that he’d never get through the rest of it. _Ever._

Ford pulled in a shaky breath and said, “You will make one mistake,” thinking of Fiddleford falling into the portal, and his one true friend’s warning. “One _very big_ mistake. ...And then you’ll realize that it wasn’t _just_ **one** mistake. That you’ve been making nothing _but_ mistakes, terrible mistakes, over and over again, for such a very long time.” With the portal, with Bill, with _everything_. And now the words just wouldn’t stop coming. “You’ll finally realize that everything he told you up until that point was all a lie, just one long series of lies. That you were so very blind to _ever_ trust him at all, in the first place, with _anything_.” Ford pulled in a breath almost spasmodically. “--He will _enjoy_ seeing your panic, and your despair. He will try and twist you up, and tear you down, and make you hurt, and laugh at you all the while.” And then he added something that it had taken him decades to think of, that maybe he’d even begin to believe someday: “You won’t deserve it, but he’ll make you think that you do.” Ford paused for a long moment. “And then, after he’s left you raw and bleeding and wishing that you’d never existed in the first place, then and only then…” He pulled in another breath, and it came out almost a sob: “ _Then_ it will start to get _worse_.”

There was a long pause.

Ford didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, okay,” he heard Stan murmur out, and then he heard the crunch of a can getting crumpled up in a fist.

Ford opened his eyes and looked up at him slowly.

His brother looked grim.

“So how many times do you want me to kill him,” said his brother, as he stared at the can in his hand, seeming to weigh it almost.

“What?” Ford said, startled.

“How many times do you want me to kill him for it?” Stan asked him, looking up at him, and Ford could hardly believe his ears.

“I…” Ford breathed out softly, staring up at his loving and overly-protective twin brother.

“I mean, is there a number?” Stanley asked him. “Because I’m thinking it’s gotta be higher than one. ‘Cause we’re already sitting at one, and you’re still--”

“...You’re not taking this seriously,” Ford said quietly, flinching away from Stanley and closing his eyes again, because of course he’d misunderstood Stan. _Of course_ Stanley would just go and make some sort of gallows-humor joke out of all this. Why had he thought to expect anything better? He never--

“The hell I’m not,” Stan told him. “If I killed him every day of the rest of my life at least once, would that even make a dent in it? I ain’t gonna live forever, y’know.”

Ford shivered and reopened his eyes, but he couldn’t look over at Stanley yet. Not when he was acting like this. “If it was just me…”

“But it ain’t. Yeah, I get it. Go on.”

Ford clenched his jaw. “He needs to die and stay dead.” Bill had killed and hurt too many people. There was no other way to stop him.

“Yeah,” said his brother. “That’s kinda what I was afraid of.”

Ford heard the clunk of the empty soda can as Stanley hurled it into the trash can with an easy underhand motion.

“Thing is,” Ford heard Stanley tell him, “You ain’t giving the kid an out.”

“--He doesn’t _deserve_ an out, Stanley!” Ford spat out at his brother, whipping his head around to glare at him, because hadn’t he been _listening?!_ “He needs to--!”

“--die, which he already did, and you ain’t satisfied by that, yeah, I get that. What _you_ don’t seem to get is that I’m not talking ‘scot free’, I’m talking ‘how can he make up for it’?”

“ _He can’t_ ,” Ford bit out, irate, turning his head away from him.

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I was afraid of, too,” his brother said next, with a sigh, as he reached for another soda can and popped the top.

“I can’t believe that you’d even _suggest_ \--” Ford began, crossing his arms and shoving himself back in his chair.

“What, really?” Stan said, sounding almost sarcastic. “You’re really that surprised? --I’m a criminal and a con-man and a crook, Ford, and you know it. I’ve got _principles_ , not your, I dunno, ‘ _morals_ ’, or whatever.” He let out a breath in consternation. “Maybe you never figured this one out, but the kid doesn’t _do_ hard ‘no’s, okay? The kid _doesn’t_ handle them well.”

“Hard ‘no’s,” Ford repeated skeptically, glancing over at his twin.

“Yeah, Ford,” Stan said. “A hard ‘no’. ‘No, I’m not going to do that ever.’ ‘No, there’s nothing you can do that’ll change my mind.’ ‘No, there’s nothing you can say to convince me.’ ‘No, you can’t make me do it, no matter what.’ ‘No, I will always say no.’ --A hard ‘no’." Stan sighed, looking like he wanted to shake his head at him. “A hard ‘no’ is a non-starter with the kid, Ford. If there’s nothing to negotiate over, take it or leave it? He’ll leave it, every time -- and it’s not a _bet_ whether you’ll like what he does next, it’s a sure thing that you _won’t_.”

“I’m not _negotiating_ with Cipher,” Ford told him angrily.

“--Which is a hard ‘no’,” his brother shot back at him in return. “But that’s fine, because you don’t have to. _I’ll_ do it instead,” he said, to Ford’s horror. “I’m better at it than you, anyway. Less likely to be taken for a ride.”

That had Ford sitting up rigidly, adrenaline running. “You _cannot_ negotiate with Cipher!” he told his brother, as Stan took a swig from the new soda.

“Can, have, and will keep on doin’ it,” his brother said succinctly, as he lowered the can. He swirled his soda can in front of him. “It’s why the kid’s mine.”

Ford felt himself practically bristle in place. “-- _He’s **not** yours!_”

Stan looked at him evenly from where he sat. “Well, he sure as hell ain’t yours,” his brother told him. “I’m fine with it.”

‘ _I’m not!_ ’ Ford nearly blurted out angrily, but instead he clarified himself with, “Bill. isn’t. yours. --You don’t own him! He _hasn’t_ ‘given’ himself to you! --And if you _really_ think that he’s ‘ _on your side_ ’--”

Ford stopped in the middle of his heated tirade of warning, at seeing the look that was on his brother’s face.

\---


	6. Chapter 6

\---

_Ford stopped in the middle of his heated tirade of warning, at seeing the look that was on his brother’s face._

The fully taken-aback, highly-confused, wide-eyed, _startled_ look.

“...Stanley?” Ford said slowly. Then Ford wondered if maybe, just maybe, he’d _finally_ gotten through to his brother, in repeating everything he had said right back to him. That maybe in hearing _him_ say it, that Stan had finally realized how absolutely **insane** it all sounded, the idea that Bill might ever even _consider_ \--

“Ford, the hell?” his brother said to him, staring at him and starting to frown. “ _Own_ him? --The kid ain’t some crackerjack box prize! What--” and then it was Stan’s turn to cut himself off, staring. “You--” and he got a look on his face staring at him that Ford couldn’t parse.

Ford crossed his arms and sat back in his chair. “He isn’t yours,” Ford repeated firmly.

Stanley stared at him for a long moment.

“...Ford,” Stan said slowly, “Bill is a person. Yeah? So--”

“--No, he’s a demon,” Ford corrected him, adjusting his glasses.

For some reason, that had his brother visibly hesitating for a moment.

“...Bill is a person,” Stan repeated.

“Bill is a _demon_ ,” Ford repeated with no small exasperation. “A triangle demon, technically,” though there was really no difference or distinction between demons. Demons were just… demons. “--Stanley, you _know_ this!” Was this what was confusing his brother so badly? This might actually explain why Stanley kept on insisting that Bill was ‘a kid’, but--

His brother was frowning at him openly now, and there was something Stan’s expression that was making Ford feel uneasy.

“Ford,” he heard his brother say. “Are you tellin’ me that… demons aren’t people?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ford told him, letting out a sigh of exasperated annoyance, because had his brother _really_ thought that Bill--?!

“Okay. What’s the difference?”

...alright, apparently, Stan _had_. Ford resisted the urge to roll his eyes at his brother, and tried to distill down decades of life experience on the other side of the portal down to a few short sentences that his brother would understand. “People are people, like you or me. Demons are insane, horrible and evil murderous monsters, who think everything in existence is just some form of game,” Ford told him succinctly. “Oh, and demons will come back again, and again, and again with a bloody smile on their faces to happily try and kill you, until they’ve killed you, no matter how many times you kill them,” he told his brother. “While people die once and then they’re just dead.”

“...Okay,” said Stanley. He was still giving Ford that frowning, discomforting long look. He sat back in his chair and crossed his own arms. “Ford, look... If Bill Cipher was a person--”

“--He isn’t,” Ford said matter-of-factly.

“But if he _was_...”

“He isn’t.”

“But _if he was_ \--”

“--Then I’d simply shoot him dead and then the problem would be permanently dealt with, Stan!” Ford told him tersely, because why was Stan insisting on such a stupid hypothetical here? “But I can’t do that, because he’s a demon! That’s why we need the circle -- to keep Bill from coming back again!” How had Stan not known this? Had Stanley not been paying any attention at all?! --Ford was _certain_ that he’d told Stan this _multiple times_ by now!!

Stan gave him a long look.

“...Yeah, okay,” his brother said after a long pause, looking away from him and scratching at his left cheek. “Guess that’s lucky for the kid, then, that he’s some kinda triangle demon and... not a person.” He turned his head back towards Ford and gave him a long look.

Ford let out a snort and looked away.

“People just die once?” Stan said, apropos of nothing, and it left Ford blinking.

“Well, yes,” Ford said, looking back at Stan. Even people in this dimension knew this. Why was he--

“Just the once.”

“Yes,” Ford agreed, frowning uncertainly at his brother. “People only live one life, and they never come back to life again after they die.”

“So you’re sayin’ that demons come back, but people can’t come back, ever,” Stan said.

“Yes.”

“People don’t ever come back _sometimes_.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” Ford began, in agreement. “They don’t--”

“But I did,” Stan said simply, and it left Ford halting in place mentally. Then Ford shook his head, ruefully this time.

“That’s--”

“Does that make _me_ a demon?” Stan asked him simply, and it left Ford lurching for mental footing with a sick feeling in his gut.

“-- _No!_ ” Ford rushed to assure him. “Of course not!”

Stan gave him a long look. “So people _can_ come back?”

“...Under special circumstances, yes,” Ford admitted. Ghosts were one, except that they stayed dead, and their wills and wants became grossly distorted over time. Heart attacks and apparent brain death and such were another, but with proper medical attention, of course those ‘dead’ beings were “brought back” -- though, really, that just meant that those people had not quite truly finished dying. Stanley’s mind wipe had killed _him_ , not his body outright, so they’d managed to bring him back… “But you know that’s not the norm.”

“Yeah,” Stan said, leaning back in his chair. He looked over at his soda can, sitting on the table.

“The circle _will_ work, Stan,” Ford told him. “I know he’s a demon, but there is a prophecy about his defeat and destruction at our hands,” by the Axolotl itself, “and… it _will_ work.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Stan still didn’t sound like he believed it, or him, to Ford’s ears.

They sat in silence for awhile.

Until the silence began to get to Ford and he couldn’t help but blurt out:

“Why would you even ask--”

“Eh,” said Stan, giving him a shrug. “Just… checkin’. I guess.”

Ford let out a breath of consternation.

“Are you honestly telling me that Bill tried to tell you that he’s a person, not a demon?” Ford asked of his brother, because the idea boggled his mind. Demons didn’t _pretend_ to be people; they looked down upon them as absolute inferiors. He’d learned that lesson well from thirty years of travels through so many other dimensions -- and it had been a hard-learned lesson, indeed.

There _were_ no good demons.

“Nah,” said Stan. “Kid says he’s a triangle demon to anybody who’ll ask, and a couple who wouldn’t; you know that.” He picked up his soda. “Kid’s actually told me a couple things, about how he thinks he’ll come back next, if he dies again, though.” He took a sip. “Not a whole lotta specifics, but yeah. A few things.” Stan eyed him. “He’s pretty sure about it.”

“ _Wonderful_ ,” Ford muttered out, rubbing a hand across his eyes, under his glasses. He dropped his hand and reopened his eyes to look up again at his brother. “Am I correct in assuming that whatever he told you is in part why you are so dead-set against our trying to kill him with the circle.” It would make sense if whatever-it-was was something that Stan considered not worth the risk, if it came about.

...At least, it would if Stan was some kind of a coward, but Stan was not. Honestly, Stan thought that _even_ odds were good odds; he took risks like most people took breathing.

“Eh. Not really,” Stan told him. “Kid only told me that stuff later. Today, actually. While you were asleep.” His brother swirled his soda can, staring down at it. “Still don’t know what to make of it, really,” Stan added somewhat philosophically, and Ford watched his brother take another sip of soda.

“Then what--” ‘ _had Bill said to him?_ ’ Ford wondered with no small worry.

“Don’t worry about it, Ford. Ain’t your problem,” Stan told him.

“Bill _is_ my problem, Stanley,” Ford said insistently. ”He--” and Ford almost flinched when Stan turned his gaze back on him.

“No,” said Stan, giving him a stony look. “Those _cultists_ are your problem.”

“Stan--”

“ _I_ handle the kid; _you_ handle the cultists,” Stan said, in a voice that went well beyond just stubborn.

“Stanley--”

“--Is the whole ‘demon familiar’ thing an actual thing?” Stan cut in, and it threw Ford off-balance.

“I-- that--” It took Ford a moment, and then he slid back in his chair and looked at his brother aghast. “Bill did _not_ \--”

“Guess that’s a ‘yes’, then,” Stan said, looking tired as he took another swig of his soda.

“Bill is _not_ your--”

“--familiar-demon thing, ‘cause he didn’t ‘hand himself over’ to me or whatever; the kid ain’t ‘bound’ to me _un_ willingly either. He ain’t my slave, I don’t own him, _yeah_ \--” Stanley rattled off like he was just _getting it out of the way_ , gesturing with his can, and--

Ford blinked.

“-- _I_ get it, do _you?_ ” Stan asked of him. “Because I told _you_ that the kid’s on _my side_ , that he’s _mine_ \-- I _never_ said that I think I freaking **own** him, holy hell,” Stan said, and he was almost glaring at Ford now. “Because the way the kid explained it to me,” his brother began, “It sounded like _making him do things_ is what that whole messed-up ‘owning a demon familiar’ thing is _all about_ , twenty-four-seven,” Stan ground out at him. “Are you seriously telling me you think that the kid can’t get along with somebody _unless_ that somebody _owns_ him and **makes** him do it?” Stan asked of him, but for some reason that Ford couldn’t explain, it felt more like a challenge than a question to him.

“...I don’t believe,” Ford began slowly, “That anyone who might manage to somehow secure the dubious ‘honor’ of ‘owning’ Bill would manage to stay sane long enough to try and take advantage of the supposed opportunity.” Ford frowned. He couldn’t imagine anyone being able to handle that kind of _uninterrupted_ mental connection with Bill without being easily and _completely_ overwhelmed. And even if that were possible... knowing the demon, Bill would likely find every last loophole in whatever was asked (...commanded?...) of him, and manage to kill his ‘owner’ outright within the first few seconds, if not sooner. _And_ even if the ownership ritual _was_ somehow successful in every last respect, leaving Bill unable to hurt or kill his new ‘master’ directly... “Frankly, I’d expect Bill to be able to convince anyone who might manage such a feat to commit suicide--” and free him “--quite readily, as being an excellent thing that they should do to themselves post-haste. He’d likely even have them thinking it was their own _brilliant_ idea, as well,” he caustically informed his brother, who sat there, blinking at him.

“Welp... guess it’s a good thing that _that_ is a thing that I am not going to be tryin’ to do to the kid ever,” Stan told him philosophically, before taking another sip from his soda can.

Ford let out a frustrated sigh and ran a hand over his face. “You aren’t _listening_ to me,” Ford complained. Bill was dangerous, and he wasn’t going to listen to anyone, let alone Stan! Even _with_ a familiar contract, which Stan had _just said_ he would not pursue under any circumstances, Bill would be completely unwieldy in the _extreme_ \--

“I’m tired, Ford,” his brother told him. “I mean… I’m hearin’ ya, but what are you wantin’ out of me?” Stan asked him.

“Perform the circle with us,” Ford told his brother immediately.

“-- _Ford_ ,” he got back in reply, his brother not quite slamming his soda can down onto the table.

“You asked,” Ford said almost peevishly.

Stan ran a hand over his face. “I _ain’t_ doin’ that, Ford. It ain’t gonna solve or fix anything.”

Yes, it _would_ \--! ...but Stan refused to believe him on that point, and Ford didn’t know how to convince his brother otherwise. Ford gritted his teeth and looked away from Stan. “Then it seems we’re at something of an impasse,” Ford said quietly, and something of an unresolvable one until Stanley finally started seeing sense again. --And Stanley _had to know that_.

There was a long silence.

“When are you gonna be able to track down those damn cultists, anyway,” Stan asked him finally. “Anytime soon?” Stan shifted in his chair. “Kinda like to know what I’m workin’ with here,” his brother said next. “Maybe if there’s some other kinda problem that’s gonna come back to bite us, that I gotta know about, to plan for.”

Ford looked over at him. “...What do you mean,” he said slowly, and felt a little off-put by Stan’s long stare.

“Ford,” Stan began, “Those idiots actually brought the kid back. You think they didn’t have a reason for doing that?” Ford stared at him. “ _Ford_ ,” Stan said with no small exasperation, “They didn’t bring the kid back as a cackly floating triangle, they brought him back _as a kid_ ,” Stan said. “You think that was just some kinda _accident?_ ” his brother asked of him. “Because _I’m_ thinkin’ they had plans for the kid,” Stan said next, to Ford’s shock.

“They couldn’t _possibly--_ ” _‘have done that to him on purpose, to have had any hope of controlling him!’_ Ford began to protest.

“--Hey, you’re the one who said you _interrupted_ them,” Stan pointed out. “So did you? Or _didn’t_ you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ford confirmed with much aggravation, at being interrupted himself, “I _did_ interrupt them in their ceremony.” So, apparently, had _Bill himself_ , somehow, if the screaming had been anything to go by. “But--”

“--Where’d he get the anchor, Ford,” Stan said flatly, staring him straight in the eyes, and that brought him up short. “ _How_ did he end up with a damn anchor on his back? Who did that to him?” Stan continued. “ _I_ don’t know,” Stan told him, “‘Cause the kid ain’t talkin’ about it. _So?_ ”

Ford felt uncomfortable under his brother’s gaze, not least of which because his brother’s hypothesis was… unsound. Yet, Ford was having difficulty trying to find the words to explain just _how_ unsound it was. ~~(It would require talking about what he knew from other dimensions, that Bill _could not possibly_ \--)~~

“What’d you find out?” his brother asked next.

Ford grimaced. “I…” He didn’t feel comfortable in the least in this moment. “I _don’t know_ ,” he gritted out finally. His brother gave him a frown. “I told you last night,” he managed to get out with only a grimace, “I was spending my time trying to find other ways to stop Bill! Or convince you!”

“Hell, Ford,” his brother began. “You--”

“-- _What do you want out of me?_ ” Ford asked in return, almost angrily. He was trying to protect their family! The kids! The demon was _dangerous!_

There was a pause as Stanley gave him a long, even look.

“...Look, you _really_ want to help _me_ out, here?” Stan said finally. “--I need you to keep your damn hands off of the kid, Ford,” his brother told him heavily. “Every damn time you hit him, you’re undercutting _me_ when I tell the kid that I can keep the fight off of him here, that he don’t need to run around killing people to get himself some space to breathe in. That I can talk people down. --You keep this up, you’re gonna break the agreement,” Stan told him. “And the kids are gonna _die_ ,” and with the look on Stan’s face, Ford stiffened in place and could _not_ move his gaze away from his brother…

...because he got the feeling that if _that_ happened, if Stan thought that _he_ was the one to undermine the agreement that Stan thought that Bill was following, and the niblings died as a result, he likely wouldn’t have to wait for Bill to kill him next. Because if Stan got his hands on him first...

Ford swallowed, hard. “I...” Ford said, with a very dry mouth.

“--I need you to _keep your hands to yourself_ ,” his brother repeated. “And I want you to tell me that you’re gonna stop trying to kill him,” and Ford felt his stomach drop out from under him.

“I’m not doing that,” Ford said, feeling absolutely sick, and just a resolute. He _would not **give in** and--_

Stan got up from his chair. “You ain’t _hearing_ me,” Stan told him, as he walked the two steps between them. “I am _telling you_ ,” Stan said, as he put a hand on the back of Ford’s chair, and leaned down very close to him, “I _need_ you to keep your hands to yourself. _Period._ Don’t argue with me about it.” He leaned in a little bit closer, and stared directly into his brother’s eyes. “I _want_ you to _tell_ me that you’re gonna stop trying to kill the kid.”

Ford stared up at his brother. And his mouth dropped open slightly.

“You’re asking me to lie to you,” Ford blurted out.

“Is that what I’m doin’?” his brother asked him, straightening up a little. “Don’t sound like what I’m doin’.” But he had a little smile going.

Ford opened his mouth to protest -- because, no, that sounded _exactly_ like what Stan was doing -- but… he slowly closed his mouth again. Because something about this seemed very… off.

So instead of denying it outright, Ford said, a little more obliquely, “Bill thinks I’m a liar.” The demon had stated as much out on the porch. And Bill had sounded angry about it.

“So?” said Stan far too casually, and Ford felt himself frown even further.

“Even if I said that to you, or anyone else,” and he’d be damned if he even so much as uttered the words out loud for _anyone_ to hear them! “He won’t believe me.”

“And if the kid asked me if I thought you were lying, I’d tell him if you were,” Stan told him just as casually, leaning up against the front of the fridge. “So?”

Ford frowned up at Stan in confusion. “Then what would be the _point?_ ” 

Stan gave him a look. “The _point_ , Poindexter,” his brother told him, “Is that if the kid asks me if you’re gonna stop trying to killing him, I can tell him that you _told_ me you’d stopped. That you said that you’re not gonna do that anymore.”

“But--” Ford stopped at the quelling look from his brother.

“Just say it, Ford. Okay?” his brother said to him, and it left Ford feeling cold, because it was a line. It was a line his brother was asking him to cross that, if he crossed it--

If, even once, he just _crossed it_ \--

Stan was staring at him, with a sort of ‘go ahead, it’s okay’ look that he’d only ever seen his twin take with him when he was feeling nervous, and something really _was_ okay...

“Please,” Stan said next, and it felt like a blow to the gut, because the few -- the _very_ few -- occasions when Stan would use that word--

The _only_ times Stanley ever used that word...

...Stanley needed him to do this, for the kids?

Ford swallowed hard. He took in a deep breath.

“I--” Ford said, in a shaking tone of voice. He stopped. He tried to get ahold of himself, to try again. “I… I’m g-going to--” He cut off, feeling like he was going to throw up, things _screaming_ at him inside his head to say it, _just say it_ \--

~~Just do it. Just _give in_...~~

~~_If you’d just give in, then--_ ~~

Ford shuddered, squeezed his fingers around the sides of the chair he was sitting in, and bowed his head. No. No.

There was a long silence.

“...You really can’t do it, huh?” he heard his brother say above him, and then let out a sigh.

Ford nearly flinched, except… Stan didn’t sound judgmental, or disappointed, or angry, or… anything, really, but tired, and a bit accepting maybe.

Ford slowly looked up at his brother.

Stan was still standing, leaning up against the front of the fridge, and he had his arms crossed. He was looking to the side, away, thinking.

“Stanley…” Ford said quietly.

“It’s fine,” Stan said. “Don’t worry about it.” (And that left Ford’s head spinning, because… he’d gone through all that, nearly given in to-- just to be told _not to worry about it?!_ ) Ford pulled in a shaky breath -- about to say, well, he wasn’t entirely certain what -- when Stan continued with, “You need to get outta the house more.”

“What?” Ford said, feeling sideswiped.

“You’re spendin’ too much time in the house, cooped up down in that lab of yours,” he was told.

“I’m not spending it upstairs, here with--” _Bill_ , Ford was about to protest.

“--you don’t have to be around the kid, Ford, I told you that,” Stan said next, and it left Ford feeling slightly uneasy.

“The niblings…” Ford began.

“They don’t have to spend all day in the house, either, Ford, geez,” he was told. “They told you that, right?”

Ford frowned. They hadn’t… in so many words. But from some of the things they _had_ said, it was easy to infer that they hadn’t exactly been chained to the house themselves. ...or been forced in some way to interact with Bill, other than exposure to him at mealtimes -- which was, in Ford’s opinion, still more than bad enough.

“When was the last time you hung out with Fiddlenerd, anyway?” Stan asked him next. “Think I’ll set up a playdate for you two.” He shoved himself off of the fridge, and stood upright to walk past him, clapping him on the shoulder as he went.

Ford felt startled, and then mostly offended. “ _Playdate?_ ” he said, shoving himself out of his chair and to his feet. He felt a little disoriented as Stan walked around the back of his chair, and picked up the empty plate, dirty utensils, saran wrap, and coffee pot as he went. “What--”

Stan kept on going, circling the table, and ended up at the kitchen sink. He set the various objects down, then reached over and turned on the burner under the kettle on the stove for hot water. “Yeah, playdate,” Stan told him, as he crumpled up the saran wrap and tossed it to him. Ford managed to catch it -- though his reflexes felt slower to him than usual, no doubt from the lack of caffeine in his system. Ford looked up at him. “I’ll call the mansion and schedule it with Tate. Get you two together to play at the mansion, or ‘do science’, or _whatever_ you nerds call it,” Stan told him, as he turned on the hot water at the faucet, and started cleaning up the dishes for the night. “Figure you could use the break.”

“A break,” Ford said flatly, eyeing Stan’s back skeptically as he turned towards the trashcan and tossed in the saran wrap for him. One did not ‘get a break’ from Bill Cipher.

“Yeah,” Stan said, “ _A break._ \--Y’know, that thing that you do when _somebody else_ is handlin’ the kid? So that you can, y’know, eat and sleep and _go outside_ and breathe and all that other junk, _away_ from the kid, without worryin’ yourself to death, like you’ve been doin’ to yourself the last week and a half?”

Ford blew out a breath and looked away from him.

“Ford, c’mon,” Stan sighed out. “I can handle stuff with the kid. I swear to you that I can. Would you just trust--”

“--you _can’t_ trust him--!” Ford began, aghast.

“--me,” Stan said, and that had Ford falling quiet. “To know what I’m doing?” No, actually, Ford _couldn’t_ , because the stakes involved were-- “Look, Ford. I’ve been falling asleep across the room from the kid every night for more than a week. He hasn’t tried anything on me, not even once,” Stanley began, and Ford shifted uncomfortably where he stood. “The kid actually talks things out with me. I can have an actual conversation with him. We’ve been working things out. With this whole agreement thing-- Even when there’s something we run into trouble on, we’ve been able to come up with _something_ we can both agree on in the meantime, while we’re trying to convince each other the other way on things.”

“Stanley--” Dear Axolotl preserve him, that was dangerous. Stanley leaving himself open to the possibility of Bill _convincing him_ \-- If Ford hadn’t already been worried _before_ \--!

“Did the kids fill you in on the agreement-stuff?”

“...Yes,” Ford admitted. ...Was that what Stan had meant, by being convincing? Getting Bill to agree in the first place, however spuriously and short-term, to such a contract proposal? The kids had said more than a few odd things about that. (Something about Stan saying Bill was reserving judgment on some part of it, or how it worked…?) He didn’t like it at all, though. (It seemed more like a point of leverage Bill could use against him, and Stan, than anything; Ford was only the more sure of that now, after this conversation with his brother this evening)

“Good,” his brother said, then immediately followed it with, “Did they tell you I’m not covered by it?”

Ford felt a jolt of shock run through him. “What??”

“The agreement’s for the kids, and Bill, and Soos, and Wendy -- and _maybe_ Melody and Abuelita later,” Stanley told him. “I’m the agreement-holder, so I help enforce it. That doesn’t mean I’m covered by it. But yeah,” Stanley gave him a tired, half-rueful smile, “The kid’s been treating me like I’m covered by it, too.”

“He’ll drop it in a heartbeat once he thinks he has an advantage, to hang you with the terms. _Less_ , if he gets bored,” Ford warned him, feeling far less secure about his brother’s safety now than he had a few seconds ago. ...He’d thought that Bill might have had at least some thin pretense for acting in Stanley’s best interest, in whatever game he was currently playing with him, to not kill him outright whenever the mood struck him. He certainly hadn’t realized that Stanley might be ‘okay’ with such a state of affairs, when it came to Bill.

“Well, probably a good thing that I’m pretty good at not being boring then, huh?” was what his brother told him next, and it left Ford groaning and running a hand across his face.

“Please tell me that you at least took that knife away from him,” Ford asked of his brother. He'd sounded adamant that he wouldn't before, but surely he could at least convince Stan tonight that--

“Yeah,” said Stan. “I took it from him.” And he knew he had to be tired, because that didn't feel right, he felt like he was missing something there…

“Is there anything else he has on him that I should be worried about?” Ford asked him next.

“He’s got my spare set of knuckledusters on him.”

“What?” Ford looked at him. “Why?” ...For punching? Bill didn’t have enough physical strength to land a solid hit, such as he was; Ford was fairly sure of that. Ford had blocked every blow he’d tried to land out on the porch easily; Bill wasn’t very fast, either.

“For defense,” Stanley told him. “Kinda like a couple really small shields, or somethin’?” He pulled his hands up into fists and made an odd sideways-sweeping motion, before dropping them again. “Kid doesn’t really know how to punch properly.”

“You are _not_ going to teach him,” Ford said quellingly.

“Not today,” Stanley said agreeably without actually agreeing, and Ford narrowed his eyes at him.

“Stanley--” Ford all but growled out at him.

“--Kid’s a thinker, not a fighter, Ford,” his brother told him. “If I teach him how to punch, it means that he’ll be that much more likely to _throw_ a punch at you, rather than get _creative_ with you instead. --I’d rather have him throw that punch at you that I _know_ you’ll be able to take, instead of the _other_ thing that you may never even see coming.”

Ford pulled in an breath in offense.

“Hey,” Stan told him. “Kid didn’t pull the knife on you when you went after him with the bracelets out on the porch; he tried punching instead.”

“He likely wasn’t thinking of it,” Ford protested. Knives were not a weapon that Bill was used to wielding. Even his own brother hadn’t sounded all that convinced as he’d said it. And it wasn’t as though Bill had tried pulling the knuckledusters out to help put some metal behind his punches, either.

That got him a grimace out of his brother and a: “Yeah, maybe.” Stan sighed. “Still figure it’d be better to have him tryin’ that, instead of somethin’ else. Not like I expect him to be startin’ all that many fights, scrapping it up with folks, when he doesn’t have to.”

“This is insane,” Ford told his brother, shaking his head. “You realize how insane this is.” Was his brother really trying to treat Bill like some sort of… stray child, who merely didn’t know how to act in polite company? One that just needed a roof over their head, three meals a day, and something warm and comfortable to wear and… what, Bill would feel _grateful_ enough for being given such simple things that he’d magnanimously _not kill them all_ whenever he next felt like it? And play a bit more ‘nicely’ with them than he might otherwise, in whatever games he wanted to play with them next?

“Kid’s insane,” Stan said. “Figures that anything that’d work for the kid would be insane. Yeah?”

“Stanley.” This made no sense. None of this made any sense. ...His brother _had_ to know how little sense what he had just said actually made.

“I handle the kid,” Stan said, “And you… handle everything else.”

“Stanley--” What was his brother even trying to say here, now? What was ‘everything else’? He was simply too tired for this. ...Or perhaps Stan was. His brother _had_ said at the start of this discussion that he’d worried about getting to bed before he became too incoherent.

“ _Let me handle the kid, Ford,_ ” Stan repeated. “Let me do what I need to do, to take care of the kid, and to keep the kid from hurting the niblings, or you, or anybody else. _I can do this,_ ” his brother told him. “Let me do this.”

Ford gritted his teeth.

“Do you even know what you’re asking me to do?” Ford said to his very tired brother, with no small frustration. “You’re asking me to simply _stand aside_ and _watch_ while you--”

“--Ain’t asking you to watch,” Stan said, and Ford grimaced and looked away.

“You want me not to interfere in what you’re doing,” Ford restated, crossing his arms across his chest (while feeling more like he was grabbing at himself for support, as his brother finished washing his dishes right in front of him). “Is that correct?”

“Yeah,” Stan confirmed. “For the kids,” and Ford felt like he’d just had the floor ripped out from under him for that one.

Ford almost snapped out a _‘--no!’_ at him immediately, despite and in spite of the consequences of what would happen if he did that. The emotional blackmail-- He struggled with it for a moment. One very long moment.

Instead, he pulled in a breath, and he let it out slowly. _For the kids._ Stan hadn’t meant it the way it had sounded, surely. _For the kids._ Let Stan do it, for the kids.

And Stan sounded so sure...

Ford pulled in another long breath. For the kids.

“ _Fine_ ,” said Ford, crossing his arms and feeling none-too-happy about it. _’For now,’_ he thought almost bloodily, eyeing his brother’s back as he finished washing up the dishes... and he had a feeling from the set of his brother’s shoulders that Stan knew _exactly_ what he was thinking, but hadn’t said.

And that… actually helped Ford to relax a little. His brother knew that he wasn’t going to stand aside forever… and was _okay_ with that? He found that _acceptable?_

It wasn’t as though working on alternate methods to kill Bill was in any way interfering with what Stan might or might not be doing -- unless and until he attacked Bill using those methods. Ford didn’t understand why Stan had even asked that of him.

...What was he _missing_ , here?

Ford rubbed a hand across his forehead.

(Oh great Axolotl, he was so tired…)

He _had_ to be missing something, for Stan to be completely noncombative about...

He watched as his brother finished puttered about with the drying rag, the cabinets, and then pulled down a mug, and he watched and he wondered.

...Stan hadn’t even asked him _how long_ he wouldn’t interfere with him and what he was doing. On the boat, Stan had _always_ wanted to know things like that: how long he was doing things, how long things were going to take. So that Stan knew how long _he_ had, or needed to--

Ford felt his shoulders drop slightly, as he watched his brother’s back.

Then he turned away slightly to look down at the table, and all of the empty soda cans strewn across it. ...That really needed cleaning up as well. So Ford did his own bit of tidying up himself.

Then Ford jumped slightly as the whistle on the kettle started to sound.

Ford blinked and turned towards the stove, then looked away and felt uncomfortable as he tossed away the last few cans, as out of the corner of his eye he watched while Stan turned off the burner and then picked up the kettle and _made tea_ for Bill -- to bring to him in bed, like some sort of servant.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” Ford told his brother quietly, as he watched Stan pour the hot water into the mug with the teabag. It would set a horrible precedent. Doing _anything_ for Bill did that.

...And Stan had said earlier that evening that he’d done that for Bill in the first few days he’d been here already, bringing him food to his bed. ‘ _Damn it, Stan..._ ’

“I’m keepin’ my promises to the kid, Ford,” Stan said as he set down the kettle, back on the stove. “I start breakin’ my word, kid’s gonna be outta here like a shot. Yeah?”

...And Stan didn’t seem to like that idea at all, if Ford was interpreting his facial expressions and tone correctly. Ford didn’t see how _not_ having Bill around would be worse than their current situation, though. It would certainly make it harder to track him down and kill Bill later if Stan continued to refuse to perform the circle with them, yes, but...

… _was_ Stan preventing Bill from performing a second Weirdmageddon, somehow, as long as Bill stayed here? Beyond however he was holding Bill’s weirdness in check with that ‘anchor’ or binding of his?

( _Could_ Bill start a second Weirdmageddon with just his magic? Ford wouldn’t put it past him, but… why _hadn’t_ he, yet? He could have done it the prior afternoon, couldn’t he? Or at the very least continued to run off away from them all while Stan had been busy dragging Ford back to the Shack. He’d picked up Bill’s and Stan’s trail of footprints back to the Shack as having paired and combined very near the site of the magical explosion Bill had set off, and _that_ site hadn’t been very far from where he himself had chased Bill to, in the woods. Bill hadn’t _run off_ after any of that, he’d _lingered_ in the area instead... _why?_ )

Ford felt frustrated. He knew he was too tired to think clearly at this point, really. Not if he was drawing so many blanks at questions that should have been simple for him to deduce an answer to...

“...Can you at least make Bill turn back into a male form?” Ford groused at his brother. Because, if they were still somewhat on the subject of ‘things that would help him sleep better at night’...

“Told you, Ford. Kid ain’t my familiar or slave or nothin’. I ain’t _making_ the kid do anything,” Stan told him. Ford opened his mouth-- “No. I ain’t askin’ him. Kid likes being female,” he was told, to Ford’s consternation. “And I figure it’ll help remind you to keep your hands off’a the kid,” Stan told him, his Jersey accent just getting thicker and thicker, the more tired he became.

“Stan...” Ford pinched the bridge of his nose. There were _so_ many things wrong with what Stanley had just said, Ford didn’t quite know where to begin.

“Keep your hands off the kid, Ford,” his brother told him. “I mean it.”

...And for some reason, Stanley kept pushing him.

“Fine,” Ford gritted out, irritated all over again. “I’ll _try_ to keep my hands off of him.” And as far as Ford was concerned, Bill wasn’t the only one who could play with words, here. Instead of grabbing Bill with his hands, he could just as easily kick the demon in the head with one of his booted feet. Or shoot him with a gun. Or pick up and use any _number_ of other multitudinous things, with which he could inflict physical harm upon Bill.

...Stan didn’t call him on any part of the loophole-riddled statement he’d just made, which was barely a promise to begin with: ‘I’ll _try._ ’ Just try. Not ‘would’; _try_. He’d _try_ , and when Bill invariably made him lose his temper again at some point… _well_. That would hardly be _his_ fault, now, would it?

Instead of voicing any problem he might have with Ford’s ‘promise’, though, his brother just grunted out a “Good,” before picking up the mug of tea he’d made for Bill and turning away from the kitchen counter.

“Go get some sleep, Ford,” his brother told him, as he walked out of the room with the mug. He turned out the light as he went.

Ford stood there for a long time in the dark, long after listening to his brother move down the hallway, open and then close the door, before he finally made his slow way away to his own rest.

\---


	7. Chapter 7

\---

Stan wasn’t in a very good mood by the time he opened the door to his bedroom.

He walked in, and… there was the kid, staring glittering dark eyes out at him from within some kind of lumpy _thing_ on his bed... what the _heck?_

Frowning, Stan flicked the light on.

...Okay. Looked like the kid had made himself a little cave-nest there out of the couch cushions, and his bedsheet. Couldn’t really call it a pillow-fort, really did look more like a cave. ...Guess that was one way to sleep under the covers without feeling them, to be kickin’ them off.

Y’know, assuming the kid didn’t roll over in his sleep and knock the _cushions_ down onto him. Those things were actually kinda heavy. ...If the thing actually stayed up, the kid might be warmer under it, though; probably why the kid did it.

Stan closed the bedroom door.

“Here’s your damn tea,” Stan said, walking over and setting it down onto the bedside table next to the kid with a thump.

Silence from the kid. No movement, either. Just those glittering eyes, watching him.

“You hear everything well enough?” he asked the kid next, sitting down heavily on his own bed.

He watched the kid watch him. 

And he managed not to flinch as the kid tossed something out of his little cave-nest and onto the bedside table.

He managed not to suck in a breath as he glanced over at the table, and got a halfway-decent look at the contraption made of wire and string, wrapped up around and over a nearly-clear crystal that the kid had gotten from who-knew-where.

\--It looked pretty damn similar to the small contraption he’d spied in the back of the cupboard a couple of days ago, half-hidden behind the mugs. It hadn’t looked like something Dipper or Ford would make -- the thing wasn’t electronic -- and Mabel did stuff with yarn and cloth, not this hippie-lookin’ stuff. After he’d found the first one, Stan had started keeping an eye out after that, and found a couple more of the things around the Shack in a couple different places.

“You can’t fix everything with tea, Stanley,” said the kid, with exactly the same tone and energy as Ford had used, complaining to him about fixing things with food. ...Yeah, he’d _thought_ so.

Well, guess that answered _his_ question.

Kid had still been banging around in here when all that had been going on, too. Damn it. He’d really had been doing all that on purpose.

“Got any questions for me, kid?” Stan asked next, of the glittering eyes staring at him from inside that little dark blanket-cave of his.

He watched as the kid slowly crawled his way out of the blanket-cave at a torturous speed and sat up... 

...to reach over and pick up the mug of tea.

Stan blinked at the kid. Huh. Kid was actually drinking the stuff. ...And staring at him over the rim of the mug, watching him.

Kid was a lot quieter than he’d expected. He took a sip. And a sip. And a sip. Watching him the whole time. ...It was almost like the kid was _waiting_ for something.

Stan waited him out.

Finally, the kid finished the last sip of his mug of tea, and set it back down. The kid had been staring at him the entire time, hadn't moved his eyes away from him once.

“Did you mean it,” was what the kid asked him, finally, and it left Stan frowning.

“Mean _what?_ ” Stan asked. “The ‘keeping my promises’ stuff? --Yeah, kid. I mean it,” he told the ancient alien space wizard who was trying to stare holes in him from across the room.

The kid sat there, staring at him expressionlessly, for a long time.

“...Try goin’ to sleep, kid,” Stan told him finally, getting up again to turn off the light. “Pretty sure the rain’s done for tonight,” it sure looked and sounded like it was, to him; the kid had opened up the shades at some point after he’d come back. “And you ain’t any better than Ford at junk, when you get tired.” Kid had no reason to keep on staying up any later than this.

Stan switched the light off, and turned back towards the bed.

By the time he had, the kid was already back inside his blanket-cave thing again.

He sat down on his bed, kicked off his slippers with a grunt, and burrowed under his own covers, all under a pair of watching, glittering cat-eyes. ‘ _Eh, let him watch,_ ’ Stan thought, as he rolled over in bed and closed his eyes. Whatever it was could wait ‘til morning.

Even if…

...even if…

(Stan yawned.)

...something was off.

\---


	8. Chapter 8

\---

Ford knew he shouldn’t be doing this. He really shouldn’t.

But he couldn’t fall asleep.

He kept worrying about…

Ford tossed off the covers of the bed. He was still fully-clothed.

He needed to check on the niblings. He could be quiet. He wouldn’t wake them up. Just a peek. Just to make sure...

\--He wouldn’t go searching through their belongings for that missing coffee, of course. No. That would be rude, and likely to wake them up.

That said, if he saw it out in the open, if it was just sitting on a bedside table… no-one would be able to fault him for taking just a bit of it to brew up a cup or two, in order to help keep himself awake and somewhat vigilant throughout the rest of the night. After all, if he couldn’t fall asleep anyway...

Ford silently unlocked the door to his room, and slipped out into the hallway.

Really, it just made sense to check on the niblings, to make sure that they were well. --A perfectly reasonable thing for him to do, really, with Bill sleeping in the house with them!

Ford still felt a little guilty, though, as he crept up the staircase that led to the niblings’ attic room. He truly hoped he wouldn’t awaken them from their respective slumbers. They both desperately needed a good night’s sleep; of this, he was certain.

That guilt left him standing in the hallway, staring at the door to their attic room, for quite a long time. ...He wasn’t entirely certain how long.

He was _so_ absorbed in his own thoughts, and in debating whether it was _really_ worth the risk of waking the niblings to open the door, that it was a surprise to him when he heard the rain start up again. He blinked and looked up.

...Odd, it was louder than he was used to hearing. Was it normally this loud? Or was it simply because he was upstairs and closer to the roof?

He could even smell that odd very-particular scent of an Earth-summer’s rain storm, mixed with the foliage of the area surrounding them. ...Did they need to better weatherproof the Shack? The smell shouldn’t be this strong.

Ford blinked and slowly turned away from the door, frowning, because actually, come to think of it, there was another explanation for that. Had someone left open a wind--?

A hand shot past his face and slapped the doorframe next to him, and Ford nearly startled backwards as he spun in place to see--

Cat eyes, staring straight up into his own from _inches_ away, reflecting a scant amount of light in the gloom.

Bill leaned in and _grinned_.

\---


	9. Chapter 9

\---

“ _Hello, Stanford_ ,” Bill purred out at him, from barely a foot away, nearly nose-to-nose with him. He sounded… _pleased_ , somehow. (That was **never** a good sign. ~~The last time Bill had done that--~~ )

It took quite a lot of willpower for Ford _not_ turn and bolt. --It got both easier and harder as his right hand clenched into a loose fist right where the grip of his gun was supposed to be, above his empty holster.

If he tried to run, Bill would just chase him if he did.

...Or go for the niblings, instead. Who Ford would be leaving behind.

‘ _Where is Stanley?_ ’ was Ford’s next frantic thought, because he _could not_ believe that his brother would just _let_ Bill--

No. Oh, no. No. _Stanley…_

Ford swallowed hard, and it took everything he had not to collapse where he was standing in utter despair.

He’d warned him. He’d _warned…_

Cold comfort now. His brother was dead, and Bill--

\-- _was unstoppable._ They needed the entire Zodiac for the circle to work. They…

Ford’s breathing picked up as he realized… _he couldn’t stop Bill_.

They were all dead. The niblings were going to--

Stanley was dead. He wasn't restricting Bill's weirdness--

Bill was inside the house. He must have brought down the barrier after--

Ford felt his arms slowly go slack at his sides.

“Really, Stanford,” Bill said to him in conversational tones. “Nothing to say?” Bill asked him, his grin widening.

“I have plenty of things I’d like to say to you,” Ford said, but his voice sounded quiet, strained, and weak even to his own ears.

Bill let out a soft laugh. “HA!” (Soft? Why had he--?) “Ohhhhhh, Fordsie,” Bill told him, and the demon _took a step forward_ , coming almost chest-to-chest with him now. “Fordsie, Fordsie, Fordsie. _When will you learn?_ ”

Ford was sweating.

“When will I learn _what_ , Bill?” Ford said quietly. He _hated_ these games, absolutely HATED them.

But if it earned the niblings even a few more minutes of life, then...

“Hmmmmm, where should I _BEGIN?_ ” Bill began, tilting his head at him sideways, and staring up at his with glittering eyes. “Maybe... “ Bill leaned in another hair more, just a touch, eyes boring into his own. “LEARN TO GO TO SLEEP.”

Ford stared down at him for a moment.

And then the words finally hit.

“...What?” Ford said, in complete confusion, and Bill wasn’t grinning at him anymore. Not... quite.

“What, do I have to SPELL IT OUT FOR YOU, idiot?” Bill continued on, rolling his eyes. Grinning again, Bill added more brightly, “ _YOU_ don’t get enough sleep, and _I_ will...” Bill raised his free hand, capturing Ford’s attention with it…

...and then Bill made the universal gesture for spacer hand-talk, in the sign-vocabulary-set corresponding to a notation that…

Ford blinked.

...to a notation that was consistent with what Ford remembered hearing in the middle of the Mystery Shack’s gift shop, the night before this one. When...

Ford stared at Bill’s hand. Then Ford turned his head, and stared down at Bill.

“Are you threatening me with what will happen if I don’t fall asleep?” he asked Bill incredulously, because that made no sense. Was Bill… actually planning on keeping him alive?

(What part of _enemies_ had Bill not understood yesterday?)

Bill was staring up at him, and he stopped grinning again. “It’s annoying when you don’t sleep,” he was told by an expressionless Bill.

...Ford wondered if this was what having a mental break felt like. (It wasn’t the first time he’d contemplated this question.) He should probably look that up at some point, now that he was back in his home dimension, with people the same species as him. (...provided he survived long enough to do so.)

Wonderful. Bill probably wanted inside his head again. _Still._ ...So, he was damned if he did, and damned if he didn’t. Sleeping meant Bill entering his dreams again. Not sleeping meant being commanded about by Bill, who knew the override command-signals for spacer hand-talk, because _of course_ he did. Except...

Ford shivered. “You can’t…” he began hoarsely. He’d been so very sleep-deprived before, the commands that he’d sleep-learned through partial-hypnosis -- really, been _forced_ to learn or they never would have let him onto any of those ships, and he’d _needed_ to _leave_ \-- had been overpowering. But if he’d gotten enough sleep, he could have fought it, he was almost certain of it--

“Oh, I can,” said Bill. “And I will! ...It’s _too bad_ that you never _could_ take good advice when it was given to you.” Bill tilted his head the other way at him. “But I suppose _that_ ship has sailed, LONG ago,” Bill ended, looking up at him knowingly.

Ford gritted his teeth. Bill hadn’t directly referenced the dimension he was talking about -- had, in fact, used a local idiom to describe what he meant -- but the message still came through loud and clear. --And Ford _had_ had the majority of the commands removed from his hindbrain, for the most part, already. He just hadn’t gotten rid of the highest-level set, because their removal would have taken an entire day, and at the time he'd had the opportunity to do it, he hadn’t felt he’d had the _time_ …

And there was no comparable technology on Earth to replicate the highly-specialized removal process. Not if he wanted any surety that his brain wouldn’t be turned to mush _in_ the process.

“Why do you want me to sleep,” Ford said next, and that had Bill blinking at him.

“I _TOLD_ you,” Bill said, sounding annoyed. “It’s annoying when you don’t sleep,” Bill repeated. “ _You’re_ annoying.”

Ford… didn’t know how to take this. He stared down at Bill.

“I’m going to stop you,” Ford said, basically falling back to his default response to anything Bill told him, in his ever-growing fatigue. (Stupid of him, really, to taunt him when Bill had just--)

“Oh, _please_ ,” Bill said, rolling his eyes again. “You really think that? ...You really think that.” Bill sounded almost disgusted with him for a moment. “No, YOU'RE NOT. --What are you going to do? _Outthink_ me?” He looked up at Ford with a sly smile. “Newsflash, Stanford! Of the two of us, guess who is _smarter_ , spends more of their time _actually thinking_ , and _knows more_ than a million librarians, COMBINED. --Hint: _it’s **NOT** you!!_” Bill grinned out at him, at the last.

Ford pulled in a breath, and tried not to choke on it.

“I should think that my own _quality_ of thought is, at least, by far superior to yours,” Ford said, feeling more than a little angry at Bill’s claim.

“Oh, you think so?” Bill said challengingly.

Ford drew in a shallow breath. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, taunting Bill like this, but… treating Bill as at least _something_ of an equal had worked for him before. He had to at least _try_... “I know so. Scientific thought, and science itself, is far superior to anything I’ve encountered anywhere else throughout the multiverse,” Ford said, with as much courage as he could muster, and a small flicker of pride in his chest -- because that, at least, was something that he knew to be true.

That flicker wavered in the face of Bill’s long bout of “AHAHAHAHAHAHA!“ laughter. “Oh, Stanford,” Bill said next, wiping away a fake tear from his left eye. “Your fun-loving ‘gentleman sir’ Bacon-with-a-side-of-French-Fried-Eggs was my _bitch_!” Bill informed him dryly. “ _I_ came up with your _limited_ ‘scientific method’ for you monkey brains to use, when you couldn’t come up with anything better,” Bill told him. “I’ve been dumping the idea back into your idiot species' general subconscious for tens of THOUSANDS of years before you even built the pyramids, _every single time_ you idiots kept torching the civilizations I was helping your 'best and _brightest_ ’ try to build!” and Ford was staring at Bill aghast at this point, head reeling. “Or did you think you managed ALL THAT on your own? --I KNOW you _tried_ to look me up at _least_ as far back as that, _Stanford!_ ” Bill hummed out at him in amusement.

Ford felt sick.

It didn’t get any better when Bill leaned in close, right up next to his ear, and he went rigid as Bill said, “You can’t outthink me. I OWN YOU.” Ford shuddered. “--I _own_ you,” Bill informed him, “And I own EVERY THOUGHT you’ve EVER HAD in your HEAD.”

Ford felt his gorge rise. It wasn’t-- It wasn’t _fair_. Bill had-- he’d--

Bill was-- He was trying to _take **science** away from him_. To _ruin_ it for him. No.

No. No.

\--No! “ _Basic logic_ isn’t _yours_ ,” Ford choked out, as Bill pulled ever so slightly away from him. (He was shaking. He needed to keep it together. For the kids…)

“Yes. It is.” Bill was looking him straight in the eye. “I came up with it FIRST.”

Ford shuddered. He felt lost. (Bill wasn't lying. He could tell, and Bill wasn't…)

He opened his mouth, meaning to cry out ‘ _parallel development!_ ’ To try and object, to say that, just because Bill _might_ have come up with an idea _first_ , didn’t mean that he **owned** it. To say… _something_ , **anything** , just, no, _please-- ~~it wasn't fair, he'd never had a chance~~_ ~~\--~~

Ford never got the chance, because the door to the niblings’ room opened abruptly.

And Ford saw Bill’s eyes go a bit wide, as he tilted sideways.

And it was at that point that Ford realized… Bill hadn’t been leaning his weight up against the doorjamb. Not _completely_. No, part of that weight had been being held up against the door itself, and...

Ford watched as Bill began to fall sideways -- _because gravity was a thing_ \-- and then the most amazing thing happened.

Bill twisted in place and contorted his body, for a moment looking like he was almost trying to bend his body in two, rocking back and forth on his heels, and then he started pinwheeling his arms backwards, to keep himself in place.

And he did actually manage this. Bill finally rocked back on his heels and stayed there, and his arms came to a halt.

Bill was breathing and blinking in place. And then he lowered his arms.

And looked down at Dipper, who had opened the door.

“WHAT,” said Bill.

(...Why hadn't he simply floated, instead?)

Dipper was frowning up at him.

“You’re not allowed in our room,” said Dipper. “Yeah! You don’t have our permission!” Mabel chorused in agreement, from farther inside the room.

“I’M NOT INSIDE. --DID YOU SEE ME STEP INSIDE?” Bill said almost accusingly, pointing down at the wooden floor and the threshold of the room… which was about an inch from his toes. “NOT! INSIDE!!”

Ford stared at Bill, and tried to process this announcement, and… something wasn’t quite right here.

“Great-Uncle Ford, are you okay?” asked Dipper, and Ford felt a little like crying. He didn’t have the heart to explain that Stan--

“ _ **Bill**_ ,” he heard intoned from the bottom of the staircase behind him, and Ford froze in place, eyes widening.

He watched as Bill’s eyes went a little wide, too. He watched as Bill got something of a look of sheer disbelief and the beginnings of foreboding.

He watched Bill get a look of complete horror as Bill turned his head -- to look past him, to presumably stare down the staircase at the old man making his way up the stairs, as Stan approached -- as Ford heard his _very much alive-and-well brother_ slowly creak his way up the stairs -- and if he didn’t know better, he’d say that, if Bill was human, then _Stan_ was the monster that went bump in the night for Bill.

Ford raised a hand to his mouth, to stifle a single hysterical laugh.

\---

_**2019-02-14, Way Too Long Author’s Note For The Interim:**_ Mmm, yeah. I get why this comes across as a weird conversation. (I probably posted this waaaaay too early. Probably needs an update/about-a-zillion-rewrites, but I don't currently (as of this morning?) have a good idea for how to add everything in here yet without losing the flow -- Necessity took me a lot longer than usual, guys -- and I kinda wanted 'off-balance’ for this chappy, anyway, *lol*)

Ford also isn't in a great state of mind to be noticing all the normal stuff, let alone the close to third-person omniscient stuff currently. (Stan might? ;) --Some of this will be coming up in the next chapter (which means maybe removing this AN later), but… yeah. I'd rather avoid any confusion in the meantime, since it's probably gonna be awhile before the next chappy goes up.

\--So, I'll just write it all here in an Author's Note for the interim instead! (Yay! ^_^ )

1) Ford is still super sleep-deprived and not anywhere near firing on all cylinders. He's gotten almost no sleep in a week-and-a-half, only around four or five hours of sleep that morning, and only another five or six hours under his belt this afternoon, now. I'm playing it realistic here guys -- it normally takes at least a few days of normal back on a regular schedule rest to be back to fully rested and at your best thinking after no sleep for two days, let alone _eleven_.

2) Ford has no caffeine in his system currently. He's dead on his feet. (He doesn't quite feel _asleep_ on his feet? But he's close.)

3) Ford honest to god thinks that Stan must be dead, because he cannot believe that Stan would let Bill come upstairs near the niblings on his own. (As in, Stan would die first.) He can't think of a way that Bill would be able to _get_ upstairs without using the stairs, without weirdness or magic, so he assumes the barrier must be down. (This is because he sees Bill's human body as completely discoordinated after his lack of fighting skill out on the porch; he wouldn't think of Bill possibly climbing up the side of the Shack and getting back in through a window… *coughscoughs*)

4) Ford also thinks Bill has all his weirdness powers back, because he doesn't actually think Bill is stupid (out on the porch was a taunt / he was trying to piss off Bill once he realized that saying that made Bill angry, so he doubled-down... and may be regretting several of his life choices at the moment). Ford knows that Bill knows that a physical round two without weirdness backing him up would not go any better for him.

5) The _“Hello, Stanford,”_ is completely without context for you guys. (I'll get into it eventually in an upcoming fic, 'Thirty Years’, which covers some of the other side of the portal time that Ford is just refusing to talk about with anyone else.) Just… know that Bill saying this is kind of Pavlovian for Ford at this point? And Ford is pretty much wired to not trying physical violence when he “knows” that physical violence is utterly useless and completely pointless, at this point, because trying anyway runs the risk of either making Bill laugh or pissing Bill off, the chances of which are about 50-50… (or _were_ when the Deal was still on…). Bill is his abuser. (In canon, Ford doesn't even try to toss a punch Bill's way in or out of the Mindscape with Bill, other than with the quantum destabilizer in-hand, if I remember correctly.)

6) Ford is very much being confronted by his abuser here, who he thinks just killed his brother and is actively (implicitly) targeting the niblings next, and may still do so _even if_ he gets what he wants out of Ford. He is still reeling from the first thought; he couldn't even handle the rest on a _good_ day, and he's still pretty sleep-deprived right now.

_**\-- oh, look! A wild Bill! Hello, Bill! --** _

1) Bill is _also_ pretty sleep-deprived right now. He was sleeping ‘eight hours out of every ten' the first couple of days, and lately he's been sleeping a lot still (in part because he's “low energy” -- and that's mainly because he's not eating a hell of a lot). These days, Bill usually gets a full night's sleep (or close to it -- nearly eight hours straight) _and_ several more in naps during/over the course of the day, in order to be reasonably functional and *coughs* “sane”. For him. This usually adds up to _at least_ twelve hours a day. Bill got four hours of sleep with Ford (and a few, maybe one or two, before he woke up the night before), but he didn't get to nap much the rest of the day while Ford was asleep.

2) Bill knows **exactly** what he's doing when he says, _“Hello, Stanford.”_

3) Bill knows that Ford isn't going to sleep on his own unless he has some active horrible thing waiting for him if he doesn't. Bill thinks Ford is an idiot, and that it will not occur to him that Bill can pull the spacer hand-talk on him again if he gets that sleep-deprived again. (He also knows that if he _does_ need to pull it on Ford again, Bill thinks that Dipper and Mabel would be “stupid” enough to tell Ford, either right before or after the fact, that Bill using spacer hand-talk on him again would be something they're not okay with. ...which Bill thinks would be them risking their own lives, because then Ford has no reason to have to sleep. *coughs*) Bill “knows” that Ford was gonna shoot the lot of them in the gift shop in two seconds flat. So Bill is threatening Ford (in small part) ‘because of the agreement’, and because in his mind this will work to help Stan out somewhat. ...But he _also_ does it because Bill finds a Ford on no sleep _incredibly annoying_ , as in: no fun to play with after a very short while. (*coughs*)

4) Bill is still _incredibly_ pissed off about the ‘being called stupid’ thing, because he thinks Ford meant it. He is flat-out tired of being underestimated, pissed off in general (as an understatement of the year), and he usually KILLS anybody -- demon or person -- who calls him stupid. And Bill is pissed off enough to show at least part of his hand and mentally attack Ford over it… when Mabel can't directly see him do it.

5) Bill is also pissed off about what Ford said in the kitchen about 'owning’ him (“dubious honor”, “supposed opportunity”) -- he sees it as Ford downtalking him again, as being useless and not worth owning (a la _'why would_ anybody _**ever** want _him? _'_ ) Since Ford doesn't like the idea of ‘being Bill's’ _and Bill knows this_ , Bill decides to up _that_ one to eleven while he's at it.

6) Bill is kind of an idiot about a lot of things. But that doesn't make him any less dangerous to Ford. Bill is and has been very abusive to Ford in the past. ...And that isn't changing anytime soon unless somebody stops him somehow. (*coughscoughs*)

\--Okay I think that covers most of it! See you in the comments section down below!

\---


End file.
